WHEN HOSPITALS ARE UNNECESSARY

Evening Star, Issue 19951, 22 August 1928, Page 1

WHEN HOSPITALS ARE UNNECESSARY

Fully 90 per cent, of all sickness docs not actually require hospitalisation, according (o no less an authority than Dr Charles H. Mavo. The Journal of the Indiana State Medical Association, .vbich quotes him to this effect, makes the following comment; “ This is particularly true of tho sickness of patients belonging to the self-supporting middic-class, who live in the smaller towns and in the country, owning their own homes or renting homes that have all the modern conveniences. It may ,bc that city dwellers in flats, where a three-room or four-room apartment has to do service for eating, sleeping, bridge, and entertainment of all sorts, are almost forced, through lack of house room and conveniences, to go to a hospital when sick, but for (he most of those belonging to tho great middlo-class—-in Indiana, for instance—such an emergency is not as common. It probably is also true that a large number of people who could to taken care of in their homes when sick are encouraged by the attending physician to go to a hospital, not because of real necessity, but because of the convenience to the physician. Likewise, if sick_ persons are cared for in the home there is too great a tendency to require the services of a trained nurse when perhaps a practical nurse or eveu a sensible attendant without training in nursing could answer ail requirements. Even when the patient goes to the hospital there is frequently shown ft tendency to encourage the employment of a trained nurse at six to eight dollars per day.”