The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1930 A SURGEON LOOKS AT HOSPITALS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1060, 26 August 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1930 A SURGEON LOOKS AT HOSPITALS

ALL is not well with the administration of New Zealand’s public •rt hospitals which give aid to close on eighty-live thousand sufferers and spend over £2,000,000 a year. Such is the considered opinion of Dr. „R. Campbell Begg, of Wellington, whose' recent investigational trip abroad appears to have provided him with a full register of comparisons and contrasts anything but wholly favourable to this country. x * Moreover, the probing surgeon has returned with appreciable determination and enough common sense 1o voice his impressions- and speak plainly about existing defects in the Dominion s expensive hospital system. And he speaks as one having authority. ]n Ihe course of his tour he visited six countries in tlie Northern Hemisphere and investigated the working of more than a hundred hospitals. Attendance at a medical congress in Madrid rounded off his experience. As an observant expert, Mr. Begg’s.opinions are worth serious consideration. It may be conceded, too, that be has not practised exaggeration in criticising the New Zealand system of public hospital administration.

To begin with, Mr. Begg has made it clear that the standard of general education in this country and a certain independent outlook, which do not prevail in other countries, are such as to give New Zealand little satisfaction from the present position. In other words, the country deserves something better in tlie administration of its public hospitals than it apparently is getting for its money and generous tolerance. Of course, there is nothing wrong with New Zealand’s medical and nursing professions. These, according to Mr. Begg are equal to those of most countries and superior to many. The defects lie in the methods of administrative control. Perhaps it did not occur to the Wellington surgeon to reflect on the possibility that, if an excellent medical profession had been doing its full duty throughout recent years in drawing attention to administrative weakness, tlie general administration of public hospitals need not have come under censure. New Zealand medical staffs, the sharp critic declares, are either badly organised or not organised at all. Also, appointments are haphazard, while there is a lack of the co-operation and good feeling between the staffs and the boards of control that exist in other countries. If those comments be justified surely the medical profession has been aware of the defects for a long time? Why have physicians and surgeons been so sliy in recommending curative treatment?

It is not necessary to traverse all tlie ground of defects explored and exposed by Mr. Begg. Most of it has been covered time and again by less authoritative, but no less observant, critics of New Zealand’s haphazard system of public hospital administration. In this column alone the attention of political and general administrators has been drawn vigorously lo the lamentable lack of adequate accommodation for chronic sufferers of incurable maladies, tlie folly of littering public hospital grounds with fever wards and institutions for the treatment of infectious diseases, the great need of isolation hospitals and the greater necessity for a convalescent home not alongside an infirmary with all the -odours of sickness and surgery, but amid a pleasant environment healing to the spirit as well as to the enfeebled body. Last year, the authorities in Auckland persisted in their unpardonable policy of dumping an infectious diseases hospital in the grounds of the general hospital. Is there any cause for wonder that a surgeon, following on an investigational and instructional trip through many countries without New Zealand’s “splendid system of general education and a certain independent outlook,” but with better-administered public hospitals, should proffer administrators in this deluded country almost an overdose of administrative medicine?

Doubtless public hospital administrators will hasten to defend their record of control, but it will require an exceptionally strong defence to resist the latest expert assault upon a defective system. In the meantime the various hospital boards have received a searching diagnosis which should force them quickly to seek drastic remedies. Since there is no suggestion that patients receive anything less than excellent treatment, the administrators of public hospitals and tlieir “badly-organised medical staffs” should make a great effort at healing themselves.