Hospital management : being the authorised report of a conference on the administration of hospitals held under the auspices and management of the Social Science Association on the 3rd and 4th July, 1883 / edited by J. L. Clifford-Smith.

  • Conference on the Administration of Hospitals (1883 : London, England)
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hospital management : being the authorised report of a conference on the administration of hospitals held under the auspices and management of the Social Science Association on the 3rd and 4th July, 1883 / edited by J. L. Clifford-Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The main proposition sought to be established is the desirability of obtaining for hospitals a management stable in character and impressed with a sense of responsibility in a degree not as yet generally attained to. The large majority of those intimately acquainted with the working of governing ■bodies doubtless will agree that nothing helps more to un- satisfactory results than the action of an ever varying com- bination of minds whose attention is only momentarily fixed upon a given subject, and whose opinions are formed upon a an imperfect comprehension of its details. When, with a view to a remedy, we enter upon a consid- eration of such shortcomings in hospital management as are shown to have an actual existence, it is perhaps well that no portion of the hospital body should escape the process of examination. Yet the particular part of the subject which has fallen to my share appears a delicate one to handle, and an attempt to penetrate too deeply might be fraught with peril to the whole organism. The governors constitute the heart of the hospital. Its warmth, its life-blood spring from them ; it is the child of their benevolence and the creature of their bounty. What then should be the position of the governors in regard to the management ? Virtually they are the proprietors of the hospital, for they have founded it and they maintain it. That they have the right to control the management cannot be denied, but is their interference likely to be beneficial ? In the position reached by this question we have an early indication of the uselessness of attempting to engraft logical conclusions upon a purely sentimental system. Hospitals are private associations which have voluntarily assumed and are expected to perform public duties. Their supporters are under no obligation to repair the negligence of the State except such as a benevolent instinct imposes, nor do the institutions enjoy those immunities and privileges which naturally occur to the mind as a fitting recompense for the value of the work they perform. Their independence is thus complete. They severally frame their own constitutions, enacting such rules as seem to them good, and the custom is to confer upon contributors certain nominal rights including a participation in the management. The donation of a stipulated sum of money constitutes the donor a “governor ” for life. This is no attempt to ask for any but a monetary qualification. Looking at the subject in the light of recent contentions, the two inquiries which arise are : — Does a donor to a