HOSPITAL METHODS

Feilding Star, Volume 8, Issue 2668, 26 August 1930, Page 6

HOSPITAL METHODS

ABROAI)

DR. CAMPBELL LEGO'S INVESTIGATIONS (Per Press Association). Wellington, Aug. 25. Dr. Campbell Begg, the surgeon, was a passenger by the Makura, which arrived from San Francisco to-day, after an absence abroad of six months. During that time lie attended the Medical Conference at Madrid and visited tin* principal hospitals of (lie Continent, Great Britain and America. < > VEli 100. IXSTITFTH >XS Dr. Begg investigated the working of over 100 institutions in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany and Spain, ui d interviewed persons of ail kinds. in any way interested or concerned in the control, administration and daily round of these institutions, including many of the best known in the medical world. HIS CONCLUSIONS The conclusions lie arrived at were that our medical and nursing professions were equal to those of most countries and superior to many. Our public hospitals on t.h e other hand, largely on account of the method of control, cow almost universally abandoned elsewhere, compared unfavourably with the hospitals abroad. The medical staffs were badly organised, or not organised at all, appointments were haphazard, and there was a lack of co-operation and good feeling between the staffs and the boards of rout iol, which existed elsewhere. As a result, the difficulties of handling large bodies of patients effectively were accentuated. WHAT US DONE ABROAD The average stay of patients in hospital, both for treatment and diagnosis, was far too long, and tlio organisation of the nursing service insufficient. There was too little supervision of th e work of junior men by the senior ones and too much scope for hasty and wrong treatment on the one baud and neglect of thorough investigation on the other. Equipment was bought and additions carried out on tli e advice <»f superintendents, where only specialists in different departments were capable of real direction. Chronic cases were mixed up with tlios 0 requiring* real medical and surgical attention, and the services of the staff dissipated instead iff being concentrated on the medical and surgical part of the hospital. All these disabilities were due in large measure, if not entirely, to our system of boards elected every two years. NEW EALAND'S POLITICAL CONTROL After instancing examples of capable management In the United States, Dr. Begg adds : “Our hospitals in New Zealand have become purely political. The Minister from the dominant party in power is in general charge and national politics have invaded the board elections. Much political propaganda tlie wliol e of rile hospital structure, and some of it has unfortunately found its way to tlie Statute Book.” Dr. Begg says that our future ds*velopmert lies in co-operative effort, and the Mayo Clinic had furnished an example.