There are now many hospital centres in the British Isles working to this end, most of them developed by renovation or reconstruction of out-dated chronic sick hospitals. Wakehurst House, the geriatric department of the Belfast City Hospital, is an example of this, and is more fortunate than most in having a new wing built to original design specifically for geriatric rehabilitation.
Policies for geriatric development, and the design of new departments, have been published from time to time, but apart from an investigation of geriatric nursing problems recently completed in the Whittington Hospital, the day-to-day duties of a nurse in a geriatric ward have not been the subject of methodological study. There is little precise information available to indicate how these duties compare with those in general wards, how many nurses geriatric wards require, what auxiliary help they need, or how to deploy the staff to the best advantage.
Wakehurst House appeared to have the environment and facilities necessary to fill these gaps in our knowledge of geriatric nursing by a systematic inquiry, and were encouraged to attempt it because nursing in the general medical and surgical wards of the hospital had been studied in 1960 by a trained team whose services, experience and former findings offered a unique opportunity to compare nursing activities in geriatric and general medical wards.