Now More Than Ever—Refusal as Redemption

Abstract

Dwight Waldo, in context of a film series on Public Administration Through Film presented at Maxwell School in 1971, issued judgment that George C. Scott film, Hospital, was the best film on administration and that just about says it concerning what public administrators face. Such a definite pronouncement, coming as it did from a man of great discernment and intellectual balance, bears reflection. The movie is about a large, urban teaching hospital in early 1970's. George C. Scott played role of Chief of Medicine, in effect co administrator of institution. The plot was set in motion when accidental deaths began occurring in hospital on a regular basis. The first death was that of an intern, who was sleeping off a sexual encounter with a nurse in a patient bed. Another nurse had mistaken intern for an acutely diabetic patient who had quite recently been moved to another floor. The nurse had not been briefed on change at shift rotation time and therefore mistakenly administered an injection of insulin to intern. More accidents followed this one. Scott remarked that he felt as if he were living out a Roman farce as he tried to figure out what was going on and how to stop it. The mystery was resolved when it was discovered that an old physician at hospital had become mentally unstable and was causing deaths to happen. He explained to Scott that, since hospital operated like a large, completely impersonal machine, all one had to do to cause people to die was to move them slightly out of place. They then would be crushed in natural course of things by gears and mechanisms of hospital as they revolved in their prescribed paths. No more positive or intentional action was necessary