A Healthy Start - Hospitals
Changes in the hospital service were not immediately obvious. In Dundee, Board Secretary Robert Moore recalled that in-patients were unaware of any change on the day: “I had to tell them about it. Everything just ran on as before. Everyone just turned up as usual. There was no impact”.
However, the war had given rise to new forms of medical treatment and specialist surgery – orthopaedics, plastic surgery and neurosurgery. These were developed in the new Emergency War Hospitals, and in time would benefit patients across the country.
Hospitals in Scotland were administered by five Regional Boards, each of which required an entirely new management structure to be created. In Dundee, Robert Moore was appointed as Secretary of the Eastern Regional Hospital Board, with responsibility for Dundee, Angus and Perthshire. The ERHB was replaced by Tayside Health Board in 1974.
Image left: Map from 1963 showing hospital provision in the Tayside area. Courtesy of University of Dundee Archive Services