HOSPITAL REFORM

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 127, 31 May 1919, Page 11

HOSPITAL REFORM

NO HONORARY DOCTORS.

An experiment which may have an important influence on British hospitals was explained by Lord Knutsford at a meeting of tho Governors of tho London Hospital. It is proposed that_ instead of now members 'being ■ appointed to the honorary medical staff, on which there are two vacancies, whole-time and adequately paid officers should bo appointed to the vacant beds.

The committed felt, said Lord Knittsford, that it was impossiblofor physicians and surgeons, who were in increasingly busy practice, to give as much time as was now required by their hospital duties. Under the new,'scheme tho whole-timo and tho honorary doctors would be colleagues of precisely equal rank, but serving the hospital in different ways. There would be no chanjo in the charitable work of the hospital.

It is understood that the- Government approve and will assist in paying, for tho new departure, and that other hospitals are to adopt the same principle. The report stated that a demonstration had been given to show that aby means of the new treatment for syphilis 150 mothers who during pregnancy were (syphilitic, had not only been cured themselves, but had also given birth to 150 perfectly healthy and normal babies. One of the saddest parts of this work was the largo number of perfectly innocent people who had - contracted the disease.

Lord Knutslord, replying to a question, sakl it was true that the "London" was paying higher _ salaries to nurses than many other hospitals. But what concerned him was not what was being done at other hospitals, but was right and fair to the nurses at tho London Hospital. The committee- recorded with thanks that Lady Northcliffe, on the closing of her officers' hospital, sent tho >vholo of tho equipment, including tho complete equipment of an operating theatre, as a gift to the "London." Mr. Douglas Grossman had sent £3000 to name three bodp in memory of his tion, killed at, Cambrai.