VALUE OF TRAVELLING CLINICS

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 282, 23 August 1940, Page 8

VALUE OF TRAVELLING CLINICS

Finding And Treatment Of

Crippled Children

HOPE FOR INAUGURATION OF SCHEME SOON

The relative merits of travelling clinics and an orthopaedic hospital in Wellington were discussed at the annual conference of the New Zealand Crippled Children Society in Wellington yesterday. The chairman of the executive, Mr. F. Campbell, mentioned discussions which had been held with the DirectorGeneral of Health, Dr. M. H. Watt, who had suggested the appointment of orthopaedic specialists as inspectors to the Health Department to attend the clinics, specially for hospital 'boards and various brtniches of the society. The war and the consequent shortage of suitably-trained men had held up the scheme, he said, but it was hoped to have it gone on with at some early date.

Dr. 'Will (Canterbury and Westland) congratulated the Dominion executive on its handling of the travelling clinics question. He said he looked on that as one of the most important functions of the society. The clinics would free from the hospitals many types of cases which could be treated on the advice of a specialist. Accommodation Question. Mrs. Knox Gilmer (Wellington) asked for more information about the work of the travelling clinics. It was no use clinics going round the country finding new cases, she said, if the hospital boards could not accommodate them. If the treatment could be given, the clinics would be doing marvellous work, but what was the use of the clinic if the cases could not be treated? The same thing happened, with the Native children—there was no place to put them when they were found. Mr. Campbell said that Mrs. Gilmer's arguments had been put forward by Dr. Alexander Gillies in his advocacy of an orthopaedic hospital in Wellington, but the question was, which came first, the patient or the hospital? The executive’s idea was that if it found the patients and there was no reasonable accommodation, it could almost demand that accommodation. Wellington was in the worst position as regards congestion, and the executive understood that there were actually vacancies in the Auckland and Christchurch hospitals. Mr. Malcolm Fraser gave details of the interview with Dr. Watt. There were cripples, he said, spread through all the rural districts and they were not in the position to receive expert consideration and examination. It was a question of bringing the clinic to the expert, or the expert to the clinic. Dr. Watt's view was that from the practical point of view it was quite useless at present urging the erection of a special hospital. He strongly favoured the travelling clinics. The weakness of the scheme was that the travelling expert had no status when be went into a hospital board’s district and Dr. Watt had suggested that these men should be made inspectors under the Health Act, which would give them the necessary authority.

The questions of an orthopaedic hospital or a travelling clinic were not antagonistic, nor were they alternative. He had nothing to say against an orthopaedic hospital, but the practical step which was easiest and best to take was to bring the 'best medical skill 'to the cripple by means of the travelling clinics. Advice by Specialists. Dr. Will said that in many of the intermediate hospitals, such as Umaru and Palmerston North, there were men who were highly trained and skilled surgeons. In many cases, all that was required of the travelling clinic with a specialist ar its head was for the specialist to be able to outline to the surgeon he could trust a course of treatment which from time to time the specialist could supervise. Mrs. Gilmer said she was not antagonistic to travelling clinics, but already there were many children not able to get into base hospitals and many more to be found. Was it right that those children should be denied the attention they could get from an orthopaedic surgeon at any of the main base hospitals? Mr. Campbell: This society has never been against orthopaedic hospitals. What we did fight against was the spending of the New Zealand society’s money for an orthopaedic hospital in Wellington.

Mr. T. Neale (Nelson) paid a tribute to the work for cripples done in Nelson by Dr. Gillies. There were trt present eight cases in Nelson, he said, for which no hospital accommodation could be found and the Nelson branch looked on the establishment of travelling clinics as a solution of the problem.