Manawatu Herald SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1918. HOSPITAL AFFAIRS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1863, 10 August 1918, Page 2

Manawatu Herald SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1918. HOSPITAL AFFAIRS.

OUR esteemed Palmerston morning contemporary, commenting on the readjustments made; to the District Hospital Board representation, to meet the wishes of 1 lie Minister for Public Health, while regretting the loss of Mi’s Gill, is pleased that: the Board ret aim: the services of Mr Nash —who polled the lowest number' of votes at the election of representatives, due, no doubt, to Mr Rash’s lack of organising his own election. We agree with our contemporary that Mr Nash is one of the Board’s most valuable members. Our contemporary goes on to say: “Mr Nash is on the spot, and when it comes to getting down to business he is always on the job. In connection with the recent loan proposals and building campaign he has rendered invaluable services, because of his practical-mindedness and his capacity for working out details. This has to be remembered, that the larger proportion of the members of the Board are country men. They attend the Board’s meetings regularly, and take an intelligent interest in hospital concerns, but they cannot and do not attempt to go ito the minutae of finance and organisation. This falls naturally upon two or three members who have the time and Inclination to go into details. The immense amount of thought and labour entailed in studying plans and estimates and

cheeking costs on an undertaking involving'many thousands of pounds of expenditure only tbo.se who are familiar with such things understand. It is not done in the public eye, it does not make itself particularly evident at the Board table.

. . . . These plans'and estimates have to be carefully reviewed and the scheme recast. This entails hours of careful work, of which the public has no cognisance before the amended plans come before the Board for the formality of continuation. It is members like Mr Nash who attend to such mailers, and their removal, from any cause, is penal to those who have to foot the hill. Therefore, while we regret the circumstance that has removed Mrs Gill, we congratulate the ratepayers on having retained the soryices of Mr Nash.”

WHAT our contemporary says of Mr Nash in a wider sense applies to the other Palmerston representative —Dr, Whitaker, whom our eontemporary has unwittingly overlooked. The Board possesses in Dr. Whitaker not only an expert, hut a man whose knowledge of hospital administration and requirements far outweighs (hat- of any other member of the Board. While the present scheme owes its inception to a country member, it was Dr. Whitaker’s brains which conceived the present comprehensive scheme, and credit must be given him for bis whole-hearted enthusiasm and persistent battling. The building committee, which has to master the details, comprises two Palmerston and four country members, and the latter have attended meetings and given equally as much time to details as those residing in Palmerston, so that our contemporary will see that the country members do go into “the minutiae of finance and organisation,” and are not in any sense of the word lookers-on.