Abstract
THE Minister of Health has issued to all hospital authorities and voluntary hospitals a memorandum explaining the main lines on which a scheme for a war-time hospital organization is being worked out for England and Wales (Emergency Medical Services Memorandum 2. H.M. Stationery Office, (6d. net). The basis of the emergency scheme is the division of hospitals into different classes according to the use which it is intended that they should serve, and almost all hospitals are included in some way. Room is to be made for the reception of casualties in one wing or block of most of the mental hospitals in the country, and a few mental hospitals are to be cleared of their ordinary patients. It is proposed to link up casualty hospitals to each other in the more vulnerable areas and to selected hospitals farther away. In order to increase the hospital accommodation, all hospitals would be asked to discharge all patients for whom institutional treatment is not essential, which it is estimated would probably free from 30 to 50 per cent of the existing hospital beds, and additional beds would be introduced into selected hospitals and institutions. Proposals for the organization of the medical and nursing staffs are also outlined.
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Hospitals in War Time. Nature 143, 514 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/143514a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/143514a0