Increase In Hospital Laboratory Work

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32073, 22 August 1969, Page 22

Increase In Hospital Laboratory Work

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, August 21. The huge increase in laboratory tests nowcarried out on patients in hospitals must go on as knowledge of medicine increased, Dr S. Williams, pathologist in charge of the Auckland Hospital Board’s school of medical laboratory technology, said today.

Addressing the conference of the Institute of Medical Laboratory Technology, he said Greenlaqe Hospital had the same number of beds in 1949 as today. In an average month in 1949 1500 tests were performed by a staff of three. On the same number of patients this year, 25,000 tests

were being performed each month by a staff of 70.

With one or two minor exceptions, the same tests were called for today, but many new tests barely conceivable 20 years ago had come into being.

A projection to 1990 would suggest that 300,000 tests would then be needed, with a staff of 500 at Greenlane to carry them out. An adequate supply of medical technologists seemed assured, but the country was already running out of pathologists and it seemed that in the next 20 years there would be no prospect of producing enough.

There was a grave danger that laboratories and laboratory staffs would be left in “professional and spiritual isolation” without the pathologists needed, he said. A new group of hospital scientific officers had recently come into being. Their growth rate suggested that Greenlane Hospital’s scientific staff could number 1000 within 20 years.