Policy Change On Children’s Ward

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29908, 23 August 1962, Page 10

Policy Change On Children’s Ward

The child health services of the North Canterbury Hospital Board should be concentrated at the Christchurch Hospital, and renovations and extensions made to the existing children’s ward instead of a new unit being provided at the Princess Margaret Hospital, the board decided yesterday. The decision will be referred to the Health Department for approval. A report recommending the change of policy was re-

ceived by the board from its policy committee after a meeting of the committee with senior members of the medical staff. One main reason for the change, the board was told, was the growing importance attached by the medical staff to day-hospital and outpatient services for children. It was felt that these could be run much more helpfully from the Christchurch Hospital, near the city centre, than from the Princess Margaret Hospital in Cashmere.

Another reason was the continued failure of the board to get the approval of the department to go ahead with the completion of the Princess Margaret Hospital

The chairman (Professor A. J. Danks) said that the inadequacies of the children’s ward (Ward 9) had been brought repeatedly before the board, and no minor amendment could be satisfactory. The proposal was not so much to increase the number of beds available as to make a “very considerable” improvement to ancillary services. '■ He afterwards told “The Press” that no encroachment on other departments was proposed, but it was hoped to extend the ward.