THE HOSPITAL AMBULANCE.

Observer, Volume XXVII, Issue 38, 8 June 1907, Page 2

THE HOSPITAL AMBULANCE.

Need|for a Better System

THE story told in our columns a fortnight ago, as to the way in which the unfortunate Miss McMillan, one of the victims of the brief plague outbreak, was hustled away from her home, to die in utter loneliness in the ambulance when on the way to the hospital, shocked public feeling beyond measure. And Dr Purdy, the district health officer, has dotted the i's and crossed the t'a of one of the lessons it conveyed by his suggestions at an inquest held a few days ago. Seeing that the city and hospital authorities, in their present dbate of agitation, are more than usually willing to give ear to the representation of the Health officials, it is possible that the evils exposed in the McMillan case are on the way to being but right. At any rate, it is quite certain that there is room for reform.

The weak point in the working of the ambulance at the present time in that it is carried on without the supervision of any responsible person called upon to show sympathetic concern for the feelings of the sufferers. The ambulance is the property of the Hospital Board, but is kept at a livery stable in the city. v With the owner of the establishment there is a contract for the supply of horses and driver on stated terms at any time when a patient may require to be sent for. Bat, apparently, till the patient arrives at the hospital neither the nurses nor the doctors there have any concern with them. ma&9 €3

What Dr. Purely suggest*, and what any person of ordinary sympathy with suffering will endorse, is that the hospital ambulance should be % kept under the personal supervision of the repponsible officials, and that a nurse

should be sent with it (whenever it is despatched for a patient. Under such a plan a scandal like that which happened in the McMillan case would be next to impossible ; under a contract system similar cases are liable to happen at any time. To say this involves no complaint against the present contractor. He is paid simply for the use of his horses. When they are supplied, and are capable of doing their work, his obligation ends. Also, the training and surroundings of ostlers and drivers do not necessarily fit them lor the exercise of tact in dealing with delicate and possibly querulous patients. It is the system, not the conduct of individuals, that is open to criticism.

At the same time, it is useless for Dr Purdy or Dr Anybody Elee to attempt to blame the ambulance system for the inhuman treatment to which the late Miss McMillan was subjected. When the Health Department forcibly removed that poor girl from her home, in a method most unreeling, the duty rested upon the Department of sending a nurse with her in the ambulance, or, at all events, of allowing her sister to accompany her. This was not done, to the terror of the patient herself and the distress of her family. To send away from home a girl at the point of death, with no nurse or other attendant in the ambulance, and with only a driver within call, was worse than scandalous.