HOSPITAL COMPLAINTS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 96, 19 February 1947, Page 5

HOSPITAL COMPLAINTS

PROPER COURSE INSISTED ON BOARD MAKES FIRM STAND “We have a Complaints Committee set up for this sort of thing, and I must insist on the proper procedure being adhered to, before we can consider them in open meeting,” said Mr J. Mullins, chairman of the Whakatane Hospital Board last week, when Mr H. C. McCready sought rectification of a state of affairs which he alleged was going on in one of the wards.

Mr Mullins went on to say that if the Board was going to listen to only one side of any verbal complaint which arose, the whole aspect would be unfair. These matters should be investigated by the proper people and then presented to the Board in a fair and unbiassed manner.

The matter arose when Mr McCready after introducing a crop of items in the general business of the meeting sought to lay a complaint which he said had been given him by a patient in the men’s ward regarding the noise in the adjoining nurses ward.

“Its very strange that when I go round every patient as a member of the visiting committee I never hear one of these things Mr McCready complains of,” rejoined Mr Caulfield.

The Chairman: Mr McCready is giving us complaints passed on to him by someone else. We have a proper method and we must observe it.

Mr McCready immediate!y asserted his right as a member of the Board to be heard. He declared that anything going to the complaints committee,would be glossed over and never given proper ventillation. What for instance, he asked, had happened to the man who 'Wcdked out of hospital? The Chairman: I can’t allow this to go on. It is all going into the press, and we only have your side to it? A strong argument developed with both the Chairman and Mr McCready keeping the floor, and the latter striving to introduce another matter having something to do with a commotion in the men’s ward itself. The Chairman: When we have both sides to these matters we can deal with them but not before.. Mr Burt: If I had these complaints I’d insist that they be put in writing before I would act upon them! Mr McCready: What about the man who' walked out in his pyjamas at night-time! Mr McGougan: Any person can walk, out if they are bent on doing it. You can’t make them stay if ■they won’t! Mr McCready: Isn’t it our duty to find out why he walked out? The chairman said that he personally had undertaken to go into that matter and_ would be doing so at .the first opportunity. The matter was then closed.