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5
Among the non-notifiable diseases Measles showed an
increase over 1937, as did Mumps, but Chicken Pox and
Whooping Cough declined.
Hospitals.
Section III. of the Report gives, in rather fuller detail than
in 1937, the work done at Mayday Hospital. No new Wards
were opened during the year, the number of beds available for all
cases, including maternity and mental cases, being 582.. The
number of admissions rose slightly (214), but there were periods,
chiefly during the first quarter and towards the end of the year,
when there was undesirable overcrowding, especially in some of
the women's wards and in the maternity wards. The average
number of beds occupied from day to day rose from 499 to 524.
The number of deaths declined from 876 in 1937 to 752 and the
average duration of stay in the hospital also declined. These
figures reflect the changing character of the work now being done
as compared with the higher proportion of chronic cases which
previously formed the bulk of the patients.
Through the co-operation of the Libraries Committee a
hospital library upon a proper footing was established durings
the year, and during the 12 months of working 11,161 volumes
have been issued to patients. This has proved a welcome
amenity.
The Committee has also been actively studying the problem
of the shortage of women entering the hospital as probationers,
and at the end of the year had progressed a considerable way
towards the formation of a scheme to obtain girls upon leaving
school, and to commence training them in those preliminary
subjects necessary for a nurse to know before she can pass the
general Nursing Council's Test Examination; and also to deal
with subjects that can now be taken as a portion of Part I. of
the Nursing Examination under the new regulations of the
General Nursing Council. But for the International Crisis in
September and its after effects the Scheme would have been
completed in 1938; as it is, however, it is hoped to have it in
working order during 1939.
The Borough Hospital, when once the Typhoid outbreak
had been dealt with, has not had a busy year as the incidence of
infectious disease has not been heavy. The comments I made in
the introduction to my 1937 report still hold good. The situation
of the hospital is not a happy one, placed as it is next to a
Sewage Farm and adjacent to large gas, electricity and other