OUR HOSPITALS.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 March 1924, Page 8

OUR HOSPITALS.

FAMOUS SURGEAN’S VIEWS.

EFFICIENCY AND PUBLICITY PRIVATE HOSPITALS DOOMED. The visiting American doctors to the .Medical Conference have charmed all those with whom they have come into contact, because of their practical way of looking at the everyday things of life. Dr. Mayo and his party are most anxious to see all they can during the three weeks they will be in the Dominion, and are especially looking forward to the visit to Mt. Cook. The famous surgeon also expects to be three weeks in Australia before sailing home again. One of the tilings which have impressed him here are the great possibilities of so young a country. To start everything off right with the experience of older countries to guide us, he thinks,is a wonderful opportunity. He spoke in appreciative terms of the public hospital, which for situation he described as unsurpassed. He wants to see its usefulness extended by catering more tnan it does for the requirements of the great middi' cheg of the community, whom he describes as the backbone of any country. Build up the health of the people who run the country and you are doing something worth white, was what he said before leaving Auck.n.'ul to, a number of interested public men who were anxious to hear his views on many matters with which he can speak with authority. “We have got our culture, our ideals, and our best impulses from Scotland, Ireland and England,” he added, “but we also inherited a bad hospital system, which we have in recent years had to alter. It is amazing that so shrewd a people as the British should confine the benefits of their public hospital system to the people unable to pay ordinary fees, and it is a fact that if the King of England wanted to have' an operation to-day he w’ouid have to have it at some place not half as well equipped for the purpose as any of the well-known public .hospitals. In other words he would not have the same facilities placed at his disposal as his meanest subject.”

Dr. Mayo said that he believed the day of the small private hospital was doomed. Many of them had not the equipment necessary to do good work. One of the best things about our public hospital system was that the light of day was let in. Hospitals must be judged by their records, and that was why every operation should be immediately recorded within a few minutes of the time it was completed. Not only that, other surgeons and doctors should have access to these records, and bp able to pass their opinions upon them. Maternity wards should also be provided at every public hospital, where, under the best conditions, women could be confined.

In Amerim now full provision was made so that women could go to the public hospitals. If complications set in there was the skilled specialist just at hand to at once attend to them, and just across the passage was the room where the best attention possible could be got. Ine welfare of the patient should always be the thing uppermost in their minds. He had been impressed by the way public men here had been anxious to hear his views, and he wanted those who travelled to visit some of the great hospitals in his country when they passed that way. Men in an insular country like New Zealand, Ivad to travel if they wished to keep abreast of the times, for that was the only way to see methods different from their own. With many of them there came a time when they wanted to rest on their oars and oecome what was called conservative, but travel helped them to ■broaden out and come into contact witn vigorous minds, which tended to freshness and a desire to emulate the things which they had seen.