MATERNITY HOSPITALS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24895, 7 June 1946, Page 9

MATERNITY HOSPITALS

Sir, —The official comment on the statements made by medical men regarding private hospitals ignore the fact that “there are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream.’’ It is not necessary to order the closing of a home; it is much less unpleasant to impose conditions which, if not impossible of fulfilment, are so hard that it’s easier 5 to give up and find some less arduous means of livelihood than running a nursing heme, maternity or otherwise. No nurse who has worked in a private home would take it over as a gift. She knows the irksome and worrying conditions imposed by the Health Department; the smaller the hospital the more efficient the inspections and more stringent the regulations.—Yours, etc., PLAIN JANE. June 6, 1946.

Sir, —Dr. Hartnell is reported in “The Press” to-day as expressing the desirability of the Health Department relaxing its demands regarding the standard of maternity hospitals. I think Dr. Hartnell, in common with other obstetricians, merely sees the theatre when it is set, and does not see the method used for the sterilising of equipment. I was very severely shocked while a patient in a private maternity home. I know the standard treatment and was appalled at the lack of technique in this place. Since then several mothers have told me that this lack of asepsis is common in numbers of private maternity hospitals. If the demands are to be lowered, to what level will these places sink; as asepsis seems to be a littleknown word. l Since my re-education in these vital matters I have befen at a loss to understand why puerperal sepsis is not a great deal higher.— Yours, etc., CONCERNED R.N.R.M. June 6, 1946.