Annual report : 1947 / Whitchurch Cottage Hospital and Dispensary.

  • Whitchurch Cottage Hospital (Whitchurch, Shropshire, England)
Date:
1947
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report : 1947 / Whitchurch Cottage Hospital and Dispensary. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    found in the work of the Ladies’ Linen Guilds in the care and maintenance of linen; or in the running of hospital libraries, or hospital canteens. No form of voluntary support could be more beneficial than to give time and energy to practical tasks of this nature. As Mr. John Edwards, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, has recently said: “I can see no diminution in the multifarious activities which are now undertaken by voluntary workers. It is vital that the spirit of voluntary work should be kept alive and that thereby the hospitals, which are now your hospitals, should remain your hospitals in the future.” In Welfare of Patients 6.—The patient in hospital will need just the same personal interest and sympathetic care under the new service as at the present time; and there will be many ways in which his physical and mental well-being can best be promoted by voluntary effort. The visiting of patients—particularly those who have no friends or relations in the immediate neighbourhood—and bringing them into touch with other contacts from the outside world, suggest themselves as fields in which there is considerable room for continued service. In other familiar ways the patient’s stay in hospital can be cheered and progress encouraged by personal help. FINANCIAL SUPPORT 7.—Although the full maintenance costs of the hospitals will be a public charge, provision has been expressly made by the National Health Service Acts for the new committees of management of hospitals to enjoy the use of “free monies” to be spent as they think fit on hospital purposes. The hospitals will have at their disposal income* from past endowments and they will be able to receive and hold future voluntary gifts. * In the Act for England and Wales there is some differentiation between teaching and other hospitals; the Scottish Act also differs to some extent from the English Act.