OPPOSITION FROM AUTHORITIES

Evening Star, Issue 25926, 18 October 1946, Page 6

OPPOSITION FROM AUTHORITIES

MOVE DETRIMENTAL TO CARE OF SICK Private hospitals would bo forced to close down if the demand for a five-day,; 40-hour week for‘their domestic staffs and nursing aids/was acceded to, was the opinion exposed by owners of private hospitals in Dunedin this morning. ' ' The demand came as a complete surprise throughout New Zealand and the hospitals were given only a week-end to make counter demands and proposals. A private hospital has a small staff which works as a team and it is considered that it would be impossible to administer such a hospital in the same way as a big public institution, , Even if the extra staff could be obtained the proposal would be impracticable, as the number of domestics would then exceed the number of patients in a hospital. ■' “ Sick people have to be nursed seven days a week,” said the matron of one of Dunedin’s private hospitals, and babies have a habit of arriving, at all times of the night and day. Nothing extra is charged for week-end service in a hospital which deals with human beings whose needs cannot be estimated by the clock. Such an award as is suggested would he detrimental to the proper care of sick people. A hospital cannot he compared to a hotel, and yet the suggestion is that our domestio staff should come under the same award as hotel workers.”