Doctors criticise hospital crowding

Press, 26 July 1980, Page 11

Doctors criticise hospital crowding

Health reporter / Overcrowding in non. surgical ward at the Christchurch Hospital and the Princess Margaret Hospital has been criticised by two senior medical officers of the North Canterbury Hospital Board.

Professor D. W. Beaven, head of the department of medicine at the Christchurch Clinical School, and Dr D. R. Hay, chairman of medical services, said that overcowding in general medical wards had become an accepted and “decidedly irksome” practice.

At the Princess Margaret Hospital, treatment rooms and sunrooms were being :■ used for' general patients when they should be free for other uses.

The bed occupancy rate at both hospitals was nearing 90 per cent, puting intolerable pressure on all staff, particularly nurses.

Professor Beaven questioned the proposal to mix patients from orthopaedic surgery with kidney patients in an up-dated ward 10 at the Christchurch Hospital.

This could lead to serious problems of crossinfection. It was not an appropriate solution to finding piaces for orthopaedic patients w’hen some other specialist wards at the Christchurch Hospital were able to take surgical patients.

The board’s superinten-dent-in-chief (Dr R. A. Fairgray) agreed that there “could be” problems of infection in mixing medical and surgical patients. It is estimated that the two hospitals need an extra 50 medical beds.

Dr Fairgray said that he considered sufficient beds were available for general medical patients. It was vital to note that the 64-year-old Chalmers block, which at present houses orthopaedic patients,

* ' ■ ” ■■■ would., not be demolished until suitable alternative accomodation was found.

It had not yet been decided where orthopaedic patients would be placed, but the old ward 9, ward 8, and ward 10 were being considered for use after up-dating. Dr Fairgray said the board was in the difficult position of having to make the best use of the financial and other resources available. “Compromises will be forced on us and what is possible does not always match that which people want,” he said. Dr Fairgray said that when extra beds were provided, they were soon filled, but the board’s resources could not cope with such growth.