Pediatric Unit Will Be Prototype For N.Z.

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30626, 17 December 1964, Page 7

Pediatric Unit Will Be Prototype For N.Z.

Details of plans for the new ward block and clinical services block at the Christchurch Hospital were revealed yesterday in a report by the North Canterbury Hospital Board chairman (Dr. L. C. L. Averill).

The ward block would contain a a pediatric (children’s) unit and eight general wards, with service rooms in the lower ground floor. Each of the other floors would have two wards.

The paediatric unit would consist of a 30-bed medical ward and three 25-bed surgical wards. It was considered the protoype unit for New Zealand. Special areas within the unit would include a day and outpatient area, schoolroom, mothers’ unit, central milk room, and tutorial unit. The

mothers’' unit would include a sitting-room, toilet facilities, and tea-making area. The paediatric medical ward would comprise two 8bed rooms, a four-cot room, five single-cot rooms and five single bedrooms. The paediatric surgical wards would each comprise four five-bed rooms and six single rooms. All single-bed rooms would contain a divan for parents’ use. The eight general wards would each have 34 beds, in four five-bed rooms, two fourbed rooms, and six single-bed rooms. The wards would be of the double-corridor type, as it had been calculated by the matron-in-chief (Mrs M. Chambers) that this type of ward saved a third of the time taken by nurses in carrying out patient hygiene,

compared with the singlecorridor type. The adult wards would include orthopaedics (probably three wards) and general medicine (probably five wards).

The number of beds per adult ward was fixed at 34 beds after investigations had shown that this number of beds could be attended by the same number of nurses as were needed for 30 beds. The clinical services block would contain the department of physical medicine (lower ground floor), pharmacy and orthopaedic department (ground floor), X-ray department (first floor), and clinical investigations unit and department of medical physics (second floor). The department of physical medicine would comprise the present physiotherapy and occupational therapy departments. It would have two gymnasia and a swimming pool 30ft by 13ft.