HOSPITAL TREATMENT

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 September 1934, Page 12

HOSPITAL TREATMENT

[to the editor.] Sir,—Please publish the following letter: — On Saturday,. July 28, I made what I believed to be a legitimate complaint to the Matron on her rounds, and within a few minutes of my complaint, Mr. McTaggart rushes into the ward, the screens are hurriedly put round me, and I suffered the indignity of listening to a tirade from the Ch urman of the Board. When I asked him to cool himself down as he was up-setting other patients in the ward, he claimed that he was not doing anything of the sort, when one patient, four or five beds away from mine, shouted out that he was disturbing patients who were very ill, and he ought, to be ashamed of himself. The Chairman then said if I mentioned this affair I would be put out of the Hospital. All this may sound very nice in a Hospital Ward, to the Chairman, when sick patients cannot get off their backs. I have no complaint with the treatment from the nurses, as they did all they possibly could do. My only complaint was that the nurses were being overworked. However events are proving that my complaint was a just one as I venture.to say that, since my complaint there has been many changes on the nursing staff because the position has become almost unbearable to the nurses, and to bring the matter a little further, with the resignation of Dr. Greenslade, a doctor of whom I do not think one bad word has ever been said by the patients, now leaves the Hospital, with Dr. Bridgeman the only doctor on the staff, after September 15, when Dr. Moore finishes. This is where the Hospital that was a credit to the West Coast has drifted to. Yours, etc. J. S. WILLIAMS, Richmond St., Cobden. Portions of this letter were somewhat personal, and were deleted.—Ed, “Star.”