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84
originally for the purposes of a Convalescent Home, but used for
some years past as sleeping quarters for the night nurses, into a
Nurses' Home. This necessitated the erection of a new building
of three storeys built against the eastern end of the old
building, the latter becoming a back wing, while at the rear of the
northern end of the new building another back wing was built to
make up the necessary accommodation. The new Nurses' Home
provides for 20 bedrooms on the first floor and 24 bedrooms on the
second floor, with nurses', matron's and sisters' sitting-rooms on
the ground floor, and on the ground floor of the old building a selfcontained
flat for the Assistant Medical Officer of Health. The
precise arrangements of the rooms will be seen by reference to the
plans on pages 85-88.
The new ward is a replica of the ward underneath it. A lift
has been built for the conveyance of patients, etc., to the upstairs
ward.
There is a good deal of disadvantage in having a two-storied
building in an Isolation Hospital, and the system would not have
been adopted in this case had it not been necessary to find accommodation
for the nurses, and it was felt desirable by the Ministry
of Health to remove the nurses from being in a position over a
ward.
I may point out that this scheme provides only a portion of the
increased accommodation which I recommended to the Council in
1920. I further recommended that a cubicle ward or wards should
be provided. The necessity of such provision for observation cases
has again been obvious during the year, and at the end of the
year I was again instructed by the Public Health Committee to
present a report on the question.