{"title":"Voluntarism as Resistance to State Control: A Case Study of the Kingston Victoria Hospital and the Fledgling NHS","authors":"Steph Haydon","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkae034","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Summary With the launching of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, this taxpayer-funded, centralised, universal service seemingly negated the need for new voluntary hospitals to be established in Britain. Within 3 years, however, the former doctors of the Kingston and Malden Victoria Hospital (KMVH) announced a new voluntary hospital (the New Victoria) after the KMVH was closed for repurposing in the NHS. Examining this case reveals stakeholder perceptions of the early NHS, including debates over general practitioner (GP) independence, local democracy and state control which predated and permeated the founding of the Service. I argue the New Victoria was founded as a response to and revolt against centralised bureaucracy and an attempt to restore a sense of GP independence and patient control in the local hospital service. Voluntarism, in the form of a voluntary hospital, was the medium through which these debates took place.","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social History of Medicine","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae034","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Summary With the launching of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, this taxpayer-funded, centralised, universal service seemingly negated the need for new voluntary hospitals to be established in Britain. Within 3 years, however, the former doctors of the Kingston and Malden Victoria Hospital (KMVH) announced a new voluntary hospital (the New Victoria) after the KMVH was closed for repurposing in the NHS. Examining this case reveals stakeholder perceptions of the early NHS, including debates over general practitioner (GP) independence, local democracy and state control which predated and permeated the founding of the Service. I argue the New Victoria was founded as a response to and revolt against centralised bureaucracy and an attempt to restore a sense of GP independence and patient control in the local hospital service. Voluntarism, in the form of a voluntary hospital, was the medium through which these debates took place.
期刊介绍:
Social History of Medicine , the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, is concerned with all aspects of health, illness, and medical treatment in the past. It is committed to publishing work on the social history of medicine from a variety of disciplines. The journal offers its readers substantive and lively articles on a variety of themes, critical assessments of archives and sources, conference reports, up-to-date information on research in progress, a discussion point on topics of current controversy and concern, review articles, and wide-ranging book reviews.