HOSPITAL

Introduction

A hospital is a healthcare institution providing patient treatment by specialised staff

and equipment. The word 'hospital' is derived from the Latin word hospitalis which
comes from hospes, meaning a host. The term 'hospital' means an establishment for
temporary occupation by the sick and the injured.

Today hospital means an institution in which sick or injured persons are treated. A
hospital is different from a dispensary - a hospital being primarily an institution where
in-patients are received and treated while the main purpose of a dispensary is
distribution of medicine and administration of outdoor relief.

According to Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary, "An institution suitably

located, constructed, organised, staffed to supply scientifically, economically,
efficiently and unhindered, all or any recognised part of the complex requirements for
the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of physical, mental and the medical aspects of
social ills; with functioning facilities for training new workers in many special
professional, technical and economical fields, essential to the discharge of its proper
functions, and with adequate contacts with physicians, other hospitals, medical schools
and all accredited health agencies engaged in the better-health programme".

Hospitals are usually funded by the public sector, by health organisations (for profit or
non-profit), health insurance companies, or charities, including direct charitable
donations.

Historically, hospitals were often founded and funded by religious orders or charitable
individuals and leaders. Today, hospitals are largely staffed by professional
physicians, surgeons, and nurses, whereas in the past, this work was usually performed
by the founding religious orders or by volunteers.

Characteristics of Hospital

The characteristics of hospitals are as follows:

1) The hospital is an organisation that mobilises the skills and efforts of widely
divergent group of professionals, semi-professional and non-professional personnel to
provide highly personalised services to individual patients.

2) Like other large organisations, hospital is established and designed to pursue certain
objectives through collaborative activity. The main objective of the hospital is, of
course, to provide adequate care and treatment to its patients (within the limits that
may be imposed by the scan resources and by extra-organisational forces). A hospital
may, of course, have additional objectives, including its own maintenance and survival
organisational stability and growth financial solvency, medical and nursing education
and research and various employee-related objectives. But, all these art subsidiary to
the key objectives of service to the patient, which constitutes the basic principle that
underlies all activities in a hospital.

3) Its principal product is medical surgical and nursing service to the patient and its
central concern is the life and health of the patient.

4) Modern hospitals are very complex socio-economic, scientific and highly labour-
oriented organisations. Still they owe their origin to the sufferings and ailments of
people and to the compassion and zeal amongst some philanthropers, to relieve these
sufferers from agony of suffering and discomfort.

5) Hospital is a integral part of social and medical organisation, the functions of which
are to provide the population complete health care both curative and preventive with
out-patient services rather out to the family in its own environment and also to carry
out training of health worker functionaries and the bio social research.

Functions of Hospital

The main functions of a hospital can be classified into six parts:

1) To Provide Care for the Sick and Injured: This can be done by accommodating
them according to their physical condition and financial status. When we talk of
physical condition, mean that some are seriously ill and require admission in Intensive
Care Unit while others are not so seriously ill and can be accommodated elsewhere
(e.g., in deluxe room, single room with AC and without AC, semi-private room and
general ward) according to their financial status. There may be some patients who may
require isolation. In that case, they should be kept in isolated rooms, but the building
should be kept always in a good state of repair, pleasing appearance and providing the
patient every mental and physical comfort. In every hospital, there should be sufficient
diagnostic and treatment facilities available such as medical laboratory, X-ray,
ultrasound, MRI and CT scan for diagnosis, and operation theatre for surgery, labour
room for delivery, nursery for children, physical therapy for rehabilitation of patients,
so that they may be properly treated.

2) Provide Training: They receive their training in both theory and practice in
approved schools and colleges. Therefore, a hospital being a complex and specialised
organisation must employ highly trained personnel so that they may train others.
Particularly in the branch of medical and paramedical education, different
associations/councils play very important roles. They make surveys of hospitals and
accord their approval. Only these approved hospitals can provide training in medicine,
nursing, dietetics, pharmacy, physiotherapy, administration, medical social work,
medical record library, X-ray and medical record technology, etc. Capable boys and
girls should be attracted to such courses as a career which offers them fair
remuneration, opportunities for self- development, and reasonable security.

3) Prevention of Disease and Promotion of Health: It is the duty of the hospitals to

cooperate with the government agencies. They can treat patients of communicable and
non-communicable diseases, notify to the recognised authorities of any communicable
disease of which it has knowledge, assist in vaccination programmes of the
government, etc.

4) Advancement of Research in Scientific Medicine: In light of the broad social

responsibility for maintaining and restoring the health, it is an important function, but
no hospital is permitted to do direct experiments on patients. It must resort to
necessary tests in laboratories and on animals. They can do so by making observation
of functions of the body in health and in disease but they will have to maintain clinical
record of patients accurately for which they have to engage qualified and trained
medical record technicians who will preserve the record in such a manner that it can be
made available for study at any time to physicians and surgeons.

5) Social Mission: The hospital as a unique type of social organisation requires

elevated values for management. It is a social mission for the hospital system to meet
the needs of the individuals without excluding them on account of their beliefs or
financial or other reason.

6) Improving Health Status: Active participation if possible in concrete initiatives in

the sphere of health education, illness prevention and protection of the environment for
the population, in order to improve the health status of the population and of the
patients. Hospitals are increasingly forgoing closer links with other parts of the health
sector and communities in an effort to optimise the use of resources for the promotion
and protection of individual and collective health status.
Hospital as An Organisation

A hospital is a multifaceted organisation comprising many committees, departments,

types of personnel, and services. It requires highly trained employees, efficient
systems and controls, necessary supplies, adequate equipment and facilities, and, of
course, physicians and patients. It is a business as well as a caring, people-oriented
institution and it has a similar structure and hierarchy of authority as any large
business.

The hospital is a complex organisation and an institute which provides health to people
through complicated but specialized scientific equipments, and a team of trained staff
educated in the problems of modern medical science. They are all coordinated together
for the common goal of restoring and maintaining a good health of the people who go
there for relief from the pain, sufferings and diseases.

Thus, the hospital is a specialised body where the patient care is the focal point and
about which all activities of the hospital revolve. The physician who examines and
takes care of the patient is in the principal position and special facilities and trained
personnel are provided to him to make his work easy and efficient. Trained personnel
include technical staff of nurses, dieticians and pharmacists.

Though essentially the priority is given on the care of the patients who are bed-ridden
suffering from serious diseases, the scope of the hospital services also extend to those
who may be potentially ill in their surroundings, of home and town or village. The
hospitals, in the western countries also take upon themselves the great responsibilities
for putting into operation the programmes in the fields of preventive medicine.
They serve as a source in many areas of the population, from which the professional
staff and personnel of various health agencies put their efforts and expend energies
with the sole object of improving the public health.

From the organisational and administrative point of view a hospital is virtually a 'city
within a city'. Within its four walls it has an operation theatre, a hotel which is in the
shape of the patients rooms, a dormitory for student nurses, residents and internees, a
school for training of nurses, technicians, dietician, laboratories, a pharmacy, food
vending operations, laundry and linen service, delivery services, a post office, a
massive internal and external communication system, blood bank, accounting and
credit services, a public relation department, a motor service, and security patrols.