New Children’s Unit Urged At Christchurch Hospital

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30270, 24 October 1963, Page 10

New Children’s Unit Urged At Christchurch Hospital

Plans for extensive alterations to the children’s ward (Ward 9) at the Christchurch Hospital should be abandoned in favour of a proposal for a three-ward paediatric unit which would form part of the first stage of the rebuilding of the Christchurch Hospital, rather than a part of the next stage in the completion of the Princess Margaret Hospital, the North Canterbury Hospital Board decided yesterday.

The board made Ms decision after receiving Ms medical advisory conwtittee's comments on the paediatrics section of the report at the Health Department's operational survey of the number of beds needed to cope with current admissions to the board’s hospitals. The report and comments were discussed and adopted by the board in committee and then released in open meeting. The comouttee's report summarised the recommendations in. the paediatric report as follows: "(1) Apert from plastic surgery at Burwood Hospital and the medical unit at the Princess Margaret Hospital there is a need for 100 children's beds.” (At present there are 70). “(2) These 100 beds should be at one hospital, and should taike the form of one unit or group of wards. “(3) The 100 beds suggested embrace the foUtowing requirements—general medicine 23, general surgery orthopaedics 25, genitourinairy 13, eye four, ear, nose and throat, 11. “(4) The bed demand is large enough to warrant grouping according to specialties, and the need' might be met by providing one medi-

cal and two surgical ward*. “(5) Hie proposal to augment paediatric outpatient services—which might be expected to enable some children to be treated as outpatients instead of inpatients, and others to be discharged earlier—should be gone on with, and in the first instance the results be evaluated after a year of operation.” The medical advisory committee offered the Mtowing comments and recommendations: “(1) The somewhat expensive scheme already envisaged tar alerartaons to ward 9 will neither provide the requisite number of beds nor permit grouping by specialties. This scheme should therefore be abandoned, and a decision made (a) to provide a group of children’s wards in the first neiw ward block to be erected at Christchurch Hospital; and (b) to proceed with only such alterations to ward 9 as are necessary to improve working conditions, as an interim measure till the new children’s wards are available. “(2) The information given in the paediatric report highlights the need for urgency in rebuilding ait Christchurch Hospital. “(3) At this stage the gen-

eral idea at providing one ctiildrcm's medical ward and two children's surgical wards could well be accepted in principle. *'(4) The figures given in the report for the bed requiremente foe the various specialties should be taken into account when preliminary sketch plans are bring prepared. By this trine there should be some clear idea as to the future provision for eye and ear. nose and throat departments, and it should then be possible to decide whether it is better for children in these specialties to go to the respective specialist wards or whether provision should be made for them in the children’s wards.

“(5) The proposal to augment paediatric outpatient services is part of the scheme for extensive alterations to ward 9. If the ward 9 scheme as such is abandoned, so also will be its proposed outpatient provision, and it would then seem logical to plan the necessary outpatient facilities in association with Uie new children’s wards.”