THE HOSPITAL SYSTEM.

Otago Witness, Issue 3869, 8 May 1928, Page 26

THE HOSPITAL SYSTEM.

STATUS OF MEDICAL STAFFS. STATEMENT BY MR J. A. YOUNG. CHRISTCHURCH, May 2. While making it clear that neither the Minister of Health nor the department ■will interfere in respect to the policy of hospital boards in regard to honorary or Etipendiary medical staffs, Mr J. T. Young last evening said that in the Waikato Hospital, in his own district, the stipendiary system had worked excellently. The Hospital Act, the Minister said, was sufficiently wide to allow every board to organise its own administration in order to meet all the demands of the medical profession in regard to providing private wards. It rested solely with the boards, added the Minister, to decide whether they should have stipendiary staffs only or Stipendiary staffs working in conjunction With the honorary staffs. ;■ AN EFFICIENT SERVICE. HASTINGS, May 2. Interviewed to-day in respect to Mr Young's statement that neither lie nor the Health Department would interfere

with the staffing policies of hospital boards, Dr H. M. Wilson, one of New Zealand’s representatives at the Medical Conference at Canberra, said that this question was most important as affecting medical efficiency in the Dominion. " Complete efficiency in surgery,” he said,” can only be achieved by surgeons working in hospitals, serving their probation as young men there, helping their seniors, and gradually acquiring that experience and skill that is needed when their time comes. This can only be done if the public decides to throw tne hospitals open to them. In all countries post-graduate training is now looked upon as essential. In Victoria they pay professors from England and America large sums of money to come to lecture to them. These sums are refunded from the fees paid by the doctors attending the post-graduate courses. This post-graduate, work can only be carried out with the co-operation of the hospitals. “ I feel,” said Dr Wilson, “ that the prime need in New Zealand to-day is that the public should settle the staffing question. We have the buildings, the men, and the money. With wisdom, compromise, and a realisation of the ambitions of the patient and doctor we can have the finest medical system in the world. We ought to build on our present system ; not destroy it. If I were an independent man I would realise that I could serve my country no better than by going

round and explaining this to the public. I would like to see the Hospital Board invite Sir Louis Barnett, who will be acting as president of the College ol Surgeons of Australasia, to discuss with them openly the> question of hospital efficiency, and not in committee; but so that he could speak through the board and the press to the public. Sir Louis is a ITew Zealander. He has been an eminent teacher in the Medical School here, and has had a long and honourable career as a doctor. He has retire'd from all active practice, and is only concerned now with giving to the public of this country an efficient medical service.” Referring to the Minister’s statement that it rested solely with boards to decide whether they have have stipendiary staffs only or stipendiary staffs working in conjunction with-the honorary staffs, Dr Wilson declared that if the medical profession was properly represented on the hospital boards there would be little doubt that its decision would favour a policy of conjoining the honorary staffs, chosen from the best men in the hospital district, with the assistance of the younger paid resident medical officers, with an administration t,o co-ordinate the services. Referring to the Minister’s statement that the Act would allow every board to organise its own administration in respect to the provision of private wards, the doctor said that these wards were certainly needed. He said that the

community hospital should comprise a hospital such as exists in most large towns of New Zealand to-day, with the addition of a building somewhat ..djacent but quite distinct, where anyone could get a private room either alone or with others, and have his own doctor in attendance whether he was a medical or a surgical case. Such patients would have to pay according to the room, just as anyone had to pay, say, for a cabin on a steamer; but. the builuing would be accessible to the hospital, so that the laboratories, X-ray, and other modern diagnostic equipment would be availably. He declared that there was no ground for the talk of class distinction in the provision of private wards, adding: “When a person, is ill there is only one consideration for the medical and nursing professions, and that is to get him well, and be he the dirtiest or most miserable person, if he is more ill than his neighbour, he will always receive more attention. In all countries I have seen this, and I can assure the public that it is an incontrovertible fact.”