The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND TUESDAY, MAY 20, 1930 AN OVERCROWDED HOSPITAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 976, 20 May 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND TUESDAY, MAY 20, 1930 AN OVERCROWDED HOSPITAL

iYNE person in every ten of Greater Auckland’s population last Vr year required and received general hospital treatment. Ten thousand patients obtained attention within the public hospital while an additional fourteen thousand out-patients, involving over seventy-six thousand attendances, were given skilled aid. . These official statistics make a phenomenal record which might be described as lamentable. It is doubtful whether any community in the world has anything like the same scale of general hospital treatment in proportion to population. If there are cities with a greater incidence of disease and accidental injuries necessitating similar attention they do not leap to the and cer tainly refrain from emphasising their distinction, i t is, ot course, as impossible to make accurate comparisons as it t« 11 ' 1 PJ- ac^lca^)^e causes of Auckland’s soaring record, irrobahly the former readiness and ability of most people to have their minor ailments treated at home wholly at their own expense have given way to a more general habit of believing that it is a community right to obtain hospital service at the lowest possible cost or even, as too often is the ease, at no personal ®5p ense ‘Better go to the hospital” is now the general rule. The medical superintendent of the Auckland Hospital has been compelled by the force of embarrassing circumstances to' raise again the question of increasing the in-patients’ aecommoelation within the hospital town under his medical administrative control. There is need of still more expansion, not only because ol the ever-increasing* demand for hospital treatment, but due also to the old scandal (not Dr. Maguire’s word, of course) that there is no other place available for patients suffering from chronic and incurable complaints. Indeed, if adequate separate provision were to be made for such cases the authorities, as well as the community, would be astounded at the number of hopelessly afflicted persons who really need the best and most humane hospital treatment available. The time appears to have come for giving serious consideration to establishing a separate hospital for serious casualty and surgical cases. Last year, experience proved that the existing casualty department was too small for the number of patients treated. There was no waiting-room, and out-patients had to wait in the passage near the main entrance. These statements, let it he noted by those who are tender under frank criticism, such as many of the lay administrators, have been made candidly by the medical superintendent. In that cramped department 0,834 patients were treated last year, involving over twenty-two thousand attendances. Is it really surprising that so many of those treated have complained about the provision that exists for. the quick treatment of injuries? As to surgical cases, the Auckland Hospital’s record last year was enough to make strong men shudder. There were 8,420 major and minor operations performed. It stands to the high credit of the hospital staff! that there were no deaths under anaesthesia in the administration or application of 7,582 local and general anaesthetics. But what of the patients who had to undergo major operations? There is neither a surgeon nor a physician in Auckland’s large company of experts who would dare j o declare that the present system for dealing with serious surgical cases, after operations have been performed, is perfect. Few of them would go even as far as to say that the system is a good one. In the forefront of Auckland’s hospital needs should be a special convalescent hospital, rather than a home, for surgical patients. The medical profession says so emphatically, but nothing is ever done about it. There also has been talk of the urgent necessity of a modern hospital, preferably near a sheltered but sunny beach, for the orthopaedic treatment of crippled children. That also remains in the morning mists of idealism, instead of coming into the sunshine of practical and most essential service. And the folly of establishing an infectious diseases hospital near the heart of the City should he changed forthwith to the wisdom of utilising the building for the treatment of general cases in the overcrowded main hospital.