Sut,—Susan Catling's article 'Hospitals versus Patients' makes very disturbing reading.
While she makes some pertinent remarks, such as questioning why all hospitals do not have a post- operative room, she has throughout the article an attitude of distrust of hcispitals and the people in them.
This attitude is. unfortunatelY, all too common among patients and is a matter of great concern to many of us intimately connected with patients and hospitals. The reasons for this distrust are sometimes obscure, sometimes justifiable and some- times misguided. •
• Mrs. Catling is justifiably aggrieved at waiting. for six hours in casualty, but prevention is not so easy. In some hospitals when admission has been arranged by a GP, the patient is taken directly to a ward from the ambulance, casualty is by-passed, leaving the casualty officer to deal, with true casualties, while the patient is taken over by the medical or surgical unit to which he is admitted and thus has a shorter Wait to be seen. Why this system is not used more often is a pazzle.
Where this does, not happen, there is a need for a consultant casualty officer, but this would not shorten the stay in casualty, as there would then he one more doctor to see the patient.
'Nor is it so easy to scrap the casualty department in most hospitals. What would then happen in the case of an .urgent major injury or illness occurring near one of .them where the patient is unfit to be moved farther than is absolutely essential?
Another cause for the delay is the wait for an X-ray. This would be reduced by having a radio- grapher in the hospital twenty-four hours a day, but there just are not enough radiographers for this.
It is understandable but, nevertheless, usually Mis- guided for patients to blame someone, either because their illness is not cured or because complications arise. In Mrs. Calling's case she understood that the consultant only liked the 'drip' kept going for twelve hours and it was, therefore, wrong to keep it going longer. This may or may not be true, but surely a large majority of doctors would agree that a drip should be kept going as long as is necessary and not just for any specific period? She implies also that linen thread used by the registrar was the cguse of her abscesses. Was she told this was the case or did she discuss it with the registrar or consultant? I suspect not.
Surely the reason for her being given an anxs- thetic as a private patient was because she had already chosen this third course, whether as a private patient or not?
Finally, the incident with the little animals sounds almost incredible. It seems reasonable to ask did Mrs. Catling tell anyone about them? If so, what happened, and if she did not tell anyone, why not? Yours faithfully,
M. M. SUNDLB
25 Edgwarebury Lane, Edgware, Middlesex
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