THE PEDIATRICIAN AND THE PUBLIC

Our National Health Service is provided by all the people for all the people and not by the rich for the poor (although those who pay heavy income taxes pay more), and not only by the provident themselves. Medical investigation and treatment were becoming more and more complex and costly, but under our Health Service modern hospital facilities are available to all, and the medical expenses of an illness need no longer cause a financial crisis in any home. In times of depression the medical and social services should be of special value. There were bound to be faults and anomalies in a service introduced quickly—some would say too quickly—but these will be removed in time. Hospitals need to be enlarged and improved in many Regions but this will be done when our national financial and material shortages are overcome. It may be that major adjustments will be required in our national medical set-up, but it is better that these should come, in the British way, after trial and error than after apparent perfection on paper at the onset. The cost of the Hospital Service is great, and needless expenditure must be cut out. Some feel that the cost of administration is too high and that there is some needless filling-in of forms and reports by office staffs. There is a tendency for uniformity to develop in the methods of approach to problems, and we in Britain should remember ember that there is no need for uniformity in all matters in the different Regions, for they have different geographies, histories and cultures. It is felt by our profession that in any national service we must be on our guard to preserve the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship, to preserve the opportunities already given to the medical profession to play an active part in the management of the Health Service, to hold fast to the traditions and spirit of the different hospitals, and to keep the Service from being the plaything of party politics. In any national scheme it is necessary to safeguard our freedom; freedom, I mean, to do what we ought to do. There is a tendency at times for the actual administration to bulk too largely in the minds of the administrators, and they must remember that medicine is not a static thing but the progressive and dynamic science and art of looking after the health and well-being of individual men, women and children. Our National Hospital and Consultant Service, I believe, is proving a success, and has been good for medicine in general and for paediatrics in particular.