Correlación entre los resultados académicos

The Civil Hospital, from its establishment in 1843 up to 1958, was considered the main hospital in the colony of Aden with 360 beds of which 138 were devoted to the treatment of TB and 10 for mental cases. It was administered

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by the colonial medical department. According to a one of the Adeni nurses interviewed in this study (AU, Interview), the Civil Hospital, which was situated in Crater contained male TB, medical, surgical, orthopaedics, Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT), and eye wards and similar ward provision was made available to the females. He goes on to state that the staff were medical doctors and senior nurses from England, and medical doctors from India. Technicians, hospital assistants and nursing orderlies were Adenies. This Adeni nurse who was interviewed made no mention in his transcript of the year to which this data refers, but it is clearly applicable to the period of this study since the period of his involvement in nursing practice was from 1956. However, on the same topic another document accessed from the ONA entitled Medical and Sanitary Report (ONA, 1951) lists the numbers of appointments which took place during 1951 for the Civil Hospital which were: A Director of Medical Services, a Medical superintendent and 3 nursing sisters (ONA, 1951:2). From this, one could determine that British nursing personnel had a leading role in the delivery of health and medical services in SA especially in Aden in the period of time of this study. It is also evident that the colonial administration hired considerable numbers of medical and maybe nursing staff from other parts of the world to help in the delivery of health and medical services. Important topics relating to this, such as the distribution of power within the health services, and nursing services in particular in SA will be explored later in a different chapter.

The Medical and Health Report of 1952 (ONA, 1952), states that the Civil Hospital continued to work despite the unsatisfactory structural conditions, under which it had to function. A mention was also made on the high figure of bed occupancy in the hospital. This indicates the pressure of bed occupation in this hospital in the year 1952. This is perhaps what made an American visitor to comment on this condition by saying:

“Gee, they’re all sick in this hospital”

Medical and Health Report (ONA, 1952:28) The writer of the report commented that:

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“Nothing could be more true than this observation”

Medical and Health Report (ONA, 1952:28) The comment of the American visitor as well as the writer of the report implies that only the very sick attended this hospital. The thing that the writer of the report makes no mention of is who the American visitor was and what the reason for his/her visit was. Nevertheless, this is not the kind of comment that a patient is likely to have made. Given the figure of bed occupancy, surprisingly there is no mention of the nurse or doctor to patient ratio in this report.

The report goes on to assert that the problem of allocating beds to patients had forced staff to admit patients and nurse them on the floor. A similar scenario was discussed earlier in the third chapter in this thesis in the same hospital but four years earlier, in the year 1948. This perhaps leads one to conclude that: 1) there had been no improvements, even slight ones, in the hospital’s conditions in regards to number of beds or capacity in general, and 2) that the number of patients attending the hospital was somehow the same if not increased than the previous years.

The Medical and Health Report of the year 1954 (ONA, 1954) reports that due to an allocation of funding for special maintenance work, various improvements to the facilities of the hospital were carried out. According to this report, these improvements included re-decoration, the building of compound walls, and fences around the perimeter, the laying of asphalt surrounds to the wards and the construction of ramps and asphalt paths to allow easy access of trolleys. In addition, a new air –conditioning plant supplying the theatre and the X –ray rooms was also installed. It is commendable that such improvements were made, but the most important problems in the hospital remained unaddressed. All the mentioned maintenance can only be seen as accessories or maybe additions. They might have helped in terms of maintaining the security of the hospital, or making the surroundings of the hospital look better, or maybe alleviating the intensity of the hot weather for the staff. They probably appeared

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to have made things look and feel better for certain individuals but not for the patients who represent the vast majority of the hospital users. In the light of the hospital’s main problems at that time, some of the investment available would have been more appreciated by the hospital users. The improvements should have been directed towards increasing the number of beds and maybe towards building more ward areas.