RUSH FOR HOSPITAL BEDS

Evening Star, Issue 20989, 31 December 1931, Page 2

RUSH FOR HOSPITAL BEDS

PATIENTS ON SHAKEDOWNS ASTONISHING CON HIT! ONS. “ This hospital is so overcrowded that as many as forty to fifty patients have at times had to sleep on the floor.” Tin's was the astonishing revelation made a few weeks ago, concerning a hospital at Salford, England, at which more than 18,000 patients receive treatment in a year. “Practically throughout the year,” according to a report of the Salford Medical Officer of Health, “ there has been, in the majority of wards, a regrettable necessity to sleep patients on temporary shakedowns on the floor on most njglits. What this means in unjustifiable inconvenience, and even danger to xmtients and to staff,” he adds, “must bo experienced to be fully comprehended.” Only the devotion and loyalty of the nursing staff permits the hospital to cope with the difficulty. It needs no words to emphasise the increased work involved in preparing the beds and in tending sick people lying on the floor. The medical superintendent of the hospital said the overcrowding had obtained during four or five years but was intensified last winter. “ Frequently, during the winter,” ho said, “ it has been necessary for some forty to. fifty patients to sleep on the floor, because we have no beds for them.

“ Everythng is done to make the patients as comfortable as possible in the circumstances, and mattresses and bedding are, ,of course, provided, but such a state of affairs is far from satisfactory.”-