Doctors Not Paying For Meals

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30715, 2 April 1965, Page 1

Doctors Not Paying For Meals

I louse surgeons employed by the North Canterbury Hospital Board are having meals while on duty but refusing to pay for them. This follows regulations effective yesterday which require hospital boards to charge non-resident doctors and nurses for meals. Some Christchurch staff nurses did not use their dining room yesterday, but others went to meals as usual. Medical staff at Wellington

and Hutt Hospitals yesterday boycotted hospital dining rooms, the Press Association reports. Only caterers arrived at the dining room of Wellington Hospital’s main nurses’ home where normally 380 nurses eat. House surgeons and registrars also boycotted their dining room. Meanwhile, at Hutt Hospital 20 to 30 nurses demonstrated in front of the hospital’s main entrance and burned their meal tickets. Some carried placards stating: “Without Nurses there’ll be Hearses,” “Should We Starve for the Sake of Lost Tickets?” and “We’re Not April Fools.” The nurses’ boycott at Wellington Hospital was not officially organised, said the

president of the Student Nurses’ Association (Miss Linda Tulloch).

“The house surgeons asked the nurses for their sympathy, and each nurse decided for herself w’hether she wanted to do without hospital meals for a day,” she said. The secretary of the hospital board (Mr A. F. Wilton) said: “The board considers there is no justification for the removal of the former concession, but it has no option but to comply with the regulations.” The matron-in-chief of Wellington Hospital (Miss B. P. Cook) said she was sorry nurses had “taken this way of airing their grievances. They are the only ones who will suffer, and they need

proper food to carry on with their work,” she said. A spokesman for the House Surgeons’ Association said charging for meals would tend to decrease the efficiency of house surgeons’ work as they inevitably kept irregular hours.

Registrars and house surgeons employed by the Otago Hospital Board and on a livingout allowance would continue to receive hospital meals free of charge, the chairman of the Otago Hospital Board (Dr. John Fulton) said tonight. Five house surgeons at Kew Hospital, Invercargill, said it was “rather unreasonable” for men working up to 110 hours a week to pay for their own meals.