DOCTOR’S REMARK QUESTIONED

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28261, 26 April 1957, Page 9

DOCTOR’S REMARK QUESTIONED

Advice By Board Member

“As soon as doctors realise that the board is running the hospital and not the doctors, the better it will be,” commented Mr L. Christie (chairman of the finance committee) when, at Wednesday’s meeting of the North Canterbury Hospital Board, Mrs G. Boyd com-* plained of a Lyttelton doctor’s remarks on her advice to parents on obtaining treatment for a child.

Mrs Boyd said that the cost of the private operation was £7O. She had asked for advice from the medical superintendent (Dr. T. Morton) on how the child could be admitted to Burwood Hospital and was told to have the child sent to the outpatients’ department so that its name could be placed on the Burwood list. The doctor had said about her actions: “What has it got to do with her?”

Did board members have to put up with that? Mrs Boyd asked. Had she done anything wrong? She did not want to step on anybody’s toes. \ Miss M. B. Howard, M.P.: I do it every day. You have done nothing wrong. You are prefectly in order. For anybody to say: “What has it got to do with her* is absolutely wrong.

Dr. Morton said members should give people information on how to use the hospital services. “Do we have to put up with that sort of thing?” asked Miss Howard. “I have had to go to Dr. Morton and have got people in straight aw«y.” Mrs Boyd said outside doctors should realise what board members were for.