HOSPITAL POLICY

Hokitika Guardian, 19 April 1933, Page 2

HOSPITAL POLICY

DISCUSSION BY SURGEONS

RESOLUTIONS OF AUSTRALASIAN

COLLEGE,

WELLINGTON, April 17

Hospital policy- was a subject to which much attention was given at thy conference of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeon s held in Sydney from April. ; 10 to April 13. Sir Louis Barnett,' vice-president of the college, who returned to-day by the Makura after having attended the conference, said resolutions were passed indicating the adherence of the college to the following principles:— (1) In all questions of hospital policy the interest of the patient must he placed first. The sick and injured must be well looked after and their ailments studied by their attendant doctors with a view to providing them with tlie most efficient treatment.

(2) This necessary sudy must in itself be regarded as creating in the hospital a centre for the attainment and for the advancement of surgical knowledge. (3) The public generally, both in and outside hospitals, should reap the benefit of the knowledge thug acquired

(4) The system of staffing on the closed system by which one paid medical officers is given a monopoly of the whole of the surgical work in a large hospital should be condemned, and a system of staffing with the aid of visiting medical officers, honorary or paid, should be perpetuated becuse:

. (a) A young practitioner in particular gains knowledge by seeing a large amount of clinical material and by the supervision, advice, association, and control of those senior to him.

(b) The patients receive better treatment through the consultations and team work of specially trained medical practitioners. (e) The general public benefits by the experience gained by a large stall of visiting medical officers. (d) The medical profession as a whole benefits by the dissemination 'knowledge gained by the staffs of hospitals and individual members of the visiting staff deservedly gain in prestige if their work is well and faithfully performed. (e) The collective investigation oi cancer cases, which should be a duty undertaken by all large hospitals, cannot be satisfactorily organised without a visiting staff. , ,

REFORM DESIRED. ‘ 'The one man system .of surgical staffing has been tried and found wanting in Australia,” said Sir Louis Barnett, “and all but a very few of their larger hospitals are now run, and successfully run, on the visiting staff plan. It is so ;also in New Zealand, but at least four of our more important hospitals—Hamilton, Gis-. borne, Invercargill, and Ashburton—cling to the closed system of staffing in spite of the insistent appeals of the College of Surgeons to institute the desired reform. In the probable event iof ithe regrouping of hospital districts anc{ the grading of hospitals for the purpose of providing more 'economic and more efficient surgical service, it would be obviously impossible to classify these particular hospitals as of a high grade of efficiency.” The problem of staffing was dealt with by Professor Bell, Otago University, who delivered the Syme oration at the conference and who also returned by the Makura. In the

course of his address the “open” meth-

od was advocated. “Conversation with Australian confreres disclosed the

fact that in Australia the one-man hospital has almost entirely disappeared,” he said to a reporter. The condemnation of the one-man hospital by New Zealand surgeons was endorsed by the council of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. It was further suggested in the Syme oration that the hospitals in New Zealand should be graded by representa- , tives of the College of Surgeons acting , under the authority of the Ministry of Health. This proposal also met with the approval of the council, and through it it was hoped that a better knowledge of hospitals and hos- . pial requirements would be diffused among the public. PROGRESS OF COLLEGE. “The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons has made gratifying progress since its foundation in Dunedin in February. 19.27,” said Sir Louis Barnett. “It now numbers nearly 600 fellows, of whom more than 100 are on the New Zealand register, and it .has done and is doing much to raise the standard of surgery, surgical education, and efficiency in hospitals throughout Australia and New Zealand. The opening ceremony was presided over by the Governor-General, Sir Tsanc Isaacs, and attended by a djffjlnguished gathering of lay and medical guests. A very extensive and splendidly organised programme of operations, clinical and pathological demonstrations, and surgical discussions at various Sydney hospitals was oai’n'iod through without a hitch, and no attending fellow could have failed to gain much useful and stimulating information. The sub-jpef-s covered a wide field, but th« greatest interest was manifested in those dealings with cancer and its increasingly successful treatment with radium, the surgery of brain tumours, the advantages, and disadvantages of new and old methods of inducing 1 anaesthesia, the surgical treatment of ' lung diseases,, and the surgery of <

bone diseases. A contribution from New' Zealand that aroused much interest