HOSPITAL HYMNS AND A GIFT

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1055, 20 August 1930, Page 8

HOSPITAL HYMNS AND A GIFT

THREE questions of importance to the whole community were discussed at yesterday’s meeting of the Auckland Hospital Board. The first arose from a complaint that patients in the wards were obliged to endure the singing of “dismal (hymns” and the distribution of “crude religious tracts.” The second was concerned with the Auditor-General’s decision that only the interest on the Auckland Savings Bank’s donation of £750 may be used for its intended purpose—the purchase of radium. The third was the vexed and urgent question of hospital extensions to relieve an overcrowded and unwieldy institution. The report that patients are being obliged to listen to religious services of a communi y nature held in the wards of the hospital calls for careful consideration. It is the duty of the hoard’s house committee, to whom the question has been referred, to investigate the position sympathetically, because those persons who have disturbed some patients with their singing and annoyed others by distributing tracts somewhat tactlessly headed, “Is There a Hell?”, obviously are actuated by the best of motives. Bnt when a good intention becomes a nuisance it cannot be tolerated. While it is right that every effort should be made to enable hospital patients to receive special comforts, material or spiritual, it is equally important that they should retain the right to reject these attentions if they so desire.- Too much cannot be said in praise of the kindly and unostentatious visiting carried out by spiritual leaders representing every form of religious belief, but it is highly undesirable that in a hospital ward of a completely non-sectarian character, helpless people sh&uld he drawn, willynilly, into proceedings which, to them, may lack significance or even be definitely distasteful.

In discussing the effect of the official intimation that only £4O a year is available from the Savings Bank’s generous gift for the purchase of radium supplies, members were justified in describing the position as being ridiculous, and the resultant income “practically useless” for the purpose. At the time the gift was made it was obvious the donors expected that the money would be spent in a direct and beneficial way. The interpretation of the Auditor-General, though doubtless right in law, serves to prove once again that “the law is a liass.” There should he no difficulty in persuading Parliament to put a clause in the “washing-up hill” making an end to such nonsense, and the preliminary move on the part of the board is the right one. In view of the* Government’s decision to grant subsidies only in works already approved and because of the present overcrowding of the hospital, it seems clearer than ever that the hoard will he compelled soon to reverse the folly of putting a fever hospital in the centre of the City, and to use the building for general purposes.