HOSPITAL CHANGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22909, 11 December 1937, Page 18

HOSPITAL CHANGE

MEDICAL DIBECTOKS

CO-OPERATION WITH DOCTORS DR. J. P. HASTINGS' VIEW The desirability of the medimjl and surgical directors which it is proposed to appoint at the Auckland Hospital being in the position to co-operate with private practitioners from the consultative angle was a point stressed by Dr. J. P. Hastings, a member ol the Hospital Board, in an interview yesterday. Ho considered it would be a mistake for them to cultivate au entirely academic outlook and said that many doctors would appreciate their assistance in obtaining diagnoses and in formulating treatments. "I am convinced that it would be inadvisable for the two directors to confine their activities entirely to hospital work, as this would tend to produce an academic outlook, somewhat divorced from the realities of medical and surgical work among tho people," he said. "Moreover, there are a large number of doctors in Auckland who have not the good fortune to be members of the honorary stall', with the result that they are liable to lose contact with hospital work. It is realised to-day that in order to keep abreast, with modern developments, practitioners must have a surgical or medical liaison with some hospital where the most, up-io-dato method* of treatment are practised and where the range ol cases is wide."

Those doctors who were outsiders as fur as tho hospital was concerned. Dr. Hastings continued, came to think that they did not count for much 111 the medical scheme of things and it was necessary to do something to counteract this attitude of mind in the interests of the general public and the practitioners themselves. In Denmark, where the system which it was proposed to introduce fit the Auckland Hospital, was functioning with distinct success, tho medical and surgical chiefs at tho hospitals consulted with private practitioners in difficult cases which tho latter might meet. The benefits of the latest ideas in diagnosis and treatment were obtained in this way. The hospital director might outline a treatment which could well bo carried out in the home, thus sparing the patient from transportation to hospital and easing to some extent the problem of overcrowding in the institutions themselves. Should the patient-be sent to hospital, the medical or surgical chief, as the case might he, would encourage the family doctor to visit his patient in hospital and become conversant with the treatment that was being carried on. He would then obviously be able to carry out the aftertreatment more intelligently.