The labour movement and the hospital crisis
1922 1922 1920s 21 pages THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE HOSPITAL CRISIS A SCHEME FOR A HOSPITAL SERVICE THE LABOUR POINT OF VIEW By a General Hospital is meant a hospital for the treatment of general diseases and accidents. At the present time, with rare exceptions, such hospitals are supported by volu...
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| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
| Language: | English English |
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London ; published by the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party
[1922]
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/A2236333-E78C-47C7-8DB5-FD14FA1684E5 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/56CC1D5F-6592-4CB6-9C98-900C778E4639 |
| Summary: | 1922
1922
1920s
21 pages
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE HOSPITAL CRISIS A SCHEME FOR A HOSPITAL SERVICE THE LABOUR POINT OF VIEW By a General Hospital is meant a hospital for the treatment of general diseases and accidents. At the present time, with rare exceptions, such hospitals are supported by voluntary contributions and each is a law unto itself. There is no organised co-operation between hospital and hospital* and absolutely no association between them and the various special hospitals under Public Authorities. In short, the country is without a hospital system. Existing public hospitals are controlled by various authorities; the London fever hospitals by a hybrid body on which the Ministry of Health and the Poor Law Authorities are both represented; other fever hospitals and sanatoria by the County and Local Health Authorities ; the public asylums by the County Councils and Councils of County Boroughs, advised and supervised by the Board of Control; and the Poor Law infirmaries by the Boards of Guardians; whilst every Voluntary Hospital is administered by its own Committee of Management. All hospitals, whatever their special purpose, have most important duties to perform on behalf of the health of the community, and this multiplicity of authorities cripples them badly in their work; no hospital can fully and efficiently carry on its work as an isolated unit lacking close touch with other hospitals in its area, and co-ordination is impossible as long as they are controlled under so many administrative authorities. Unification of control is therefore the first essential to establishing a public hospital scheme, of which the voluntary hospitals should become a part. THE WORK OF GENERAL HOSPITALS The nature of the work of a large General Hospital as carried out to-day is not, perhaps, sufficiently realised by the public. From being a place where physic, pills and ointments were the armamentarium of the physician, and the knife all that the surgeon could offer, it has gradually developed into an institution for the prevention and treatment of disease by organised co-operative methods. With the advance of knowledge, with the discovery of precise and scientific methods of diagnosis and treatment, and with the harnessing of many allied sciences to the art of medicine and surgery, it has come about that no one man can investigate and treat every case that may be admitted under his charge to the wards of a General Hospital. Few people realise how many different individuals are concerned in discovering the nature of a patient's illness and assisting in its treatment. Physicians and surgeons, and specialists in diseases of the skin, eye, ear, nose and throat, bowel, kidney, nervous system, and diseases of women, as well as those specially skilled in X-ray, radium and light treatment, and massage, may all be needed for precise diagnosis or efHcient treatment. For a patient's benefit, too, although quite unknown to him, the case records of the Hospital may * Voluntary Hospitals Committee : Final Report (Cmd. 1335), pp. 13 and 14. 1
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |