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The Health of Barking
Maternity Hospital.
There was one thing which John talked over with me, and it was that Mary,
after she left her cubicle where she had been resting for two days or so, for the
first half day was alone in a four-bedded ward. The four beds became occupied
in about two days, and then Mary left, but she had made friends with the other
people in the ward and, talking it over at the clinic afterwards, she learned that
when she had left no other persons were admitted to the ward until the other three
had left, and there was about two days interval of time between Mary leaving and
the last person leaving.
John wanted to know whether more use could not be made of beds and if not,
why not! I pointed out to John that if you were running a four-bedded ward and
each bed were occupied on the average 200 days out of the year, you were doing
very well, and that to try to do any more was to run the risk of cross-infection, a
risk which normally it was not proper to run. With the best will and intention in
the world we couldn't say that nothing would ever go wrong, but if you were
constantly changing your population the possibility of cross-infection would thereby
be increased.
I told John this was the system we had used in Barking for a long time. Some
people call it the Boston system, because these people went to America, long after
we had been using it in Barking, and had brought it back as a new system. To
hear them talk about it you would think they were Christopher Colombus !
John readily appreciated the situation and recognised that it represented the
care and attention which could be expected in such a matter. I pointed out to
him that women generally at this time are in a particularly delicate state of health
and that to run maternity beds as though an empty bed were a crime is futile and
indeed it is filling the beds which is criminal and not having some of them occasionally
empty
Ambulance Service.
One of the services in the town which Mary spoke of most appreciatively was
the Ambulance Service. When Mary's time came to go to hospital John went
round to the nearest 'phone box, which was only five minutes or so away, and he had
only just got back—he got back as quickly as he could—when the ambulance appeared
as though by magic.

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