WELLINGTON HOSPITAL VIEW

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 725, 5 June 1953, Page 6

WELLINGTON HOSPITAL VIEW

\V HEN a sick child has to be separated from its home the wrench is made when it enters hospital. Nowadays a mother explains to the child that it is going away for a while to get better, nurses are kindly and sympathetic, and we find that children in the wards are happy. It is possible that a daily visit from a child’s mother might upset it more each day than leaving it alone with the other children, with’ whom it becomes very happy and contented. The weekly visits seem quite satisfactory. I have never heard parents complain about not being able to visit their children daily and don’t feel they would welcome daily visiting, as some of them have other small children at home or coming home from school, who make daily visits impossible. Frequently they have had their child sick at home and need a rest while it is in hospital. I do not feel that a child’s personality suffers if he is visited only once a week. However, in some conditions it helps to have the mother to sit with her child, and if a child is seriously ill visiting at any time is allowed. I think daily visiting might be worth trying as an experiment if it were possible to have a separate room for children whose mothers could visit them daily. It could be a relief for the nursing staff if mothers helped with bathing, feeding, etc.; and it is true that nurses can treat their patients better if, through close contact with the relatives, they gain a knowledge of the patients’ home backgrounds. But it seems to me a fact that many mothers would have too many ties to visit their children daily in hospital, and that would be a major difficulty in a daily visiting scheme. Children who could not have their mothers daily would be very

distressed if they saw others having theirs, so that I feel that unless those who could have their mothers daily could be kept apart from the rest it would bé better to treat all alike and continue to have only one visiting day a week. We find that on our visiting day the children who have no visitors require a little more attention from the

nursing staff.

Miss

N. M.

Knight

Matron-in-Chief, Wellington Public Hospital