Board Undecided About Telephones For Patients

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29938, 27 September 1962, Page 9

Board Undecided About Telephones For Patients

Portable, coin-slot telephones on which patients confined to bed make private calls are unlikely to be provided at the Princess Margaret Hospital. The North Canterbury Hospital Board yesterday referred the proposal back to the institutions committee, but it was stated that the Health Department would not provide funds for the installation and hire of the telephones. It was reported that the Hospitals Advisory Council had considered the question of the provision of portable telephones. However, it was considered that the installation would be costly and present many problems. The Minister of Health (Mr McKay) had approved the council's recommendation that hospital boards be

advised that the amenity could not be provided unless boards could meet both installation and annual costs from amenity funds. ‘‘Boards should also consider carefully the problems these telephones could raise in ward administration. It is fell the position can be met reasonably by the provision of multi-coin telephones within the hospital buildings,” the council’s report said. The board’s institutions committee reported that the Friends of the Princess Margaret Hospital had offered to assist in the installation of telephones ' for the private calls of patients, but in view of the physical lay-out of the wards art the hospital it was considered inadvisable to instal them. “Quite Usual Overseas” Dr. I. C. Mclntyre said he was disappointed that the committee had recommended that the proposal be rejected. The provision of bedside telephones for patients’ private calls was quite usual in hospitals overseas. In Guy’s Hospital, London, he had seen the telephones installed in two 24-bed wards. The sister-in-charge had said that the staff experienced no difficulties with the telephones. A telephone was brought to the bedside at the patient’s request. “It made the patients cheerful and happy being able to have conversations with friends outside the hospital, friends who could not visit them. I cannot see any particular problem involved, particularly if we plan for the telephones when building new wards,” Dr. Mclntyre said. Questioned by the chairman (Professor A. J. Danks), the board’s secretary (Mr J. G. Laurenson) said that the objections to the bedside telephones were the high costs, the unsuitability of the rooms in the wards at The Princess Margaret Hospital for telephones, and the additional work it would put on the nursing staff, Messrs D. McMillan and V. J. Corbett said irt was difficult to see where the system would end if telephones were introduced. Patients might almost run their businesses from hospital. It could be that the patient’s recovery would be retarded by over-use of the telephone.