The Condition of the Archives

Abstract

Having both worked in the hospital system for more than six years, we were very aware, anecdotally, of many of the problems associated with the disposal of administrative records in both our own hospitals and those where colleagues worked. We wanted to confirm whether what we had observed over that time was happening more widely. We wanted a profile of how each hospital dealt with its permanent and temporary administrative records as well as those in archival custody, and who was managing them. We have intentionally excluded medical records as they are a specialised sub-group managed by well established departments with trained staff. The hospitals will remain unidentified as it will serve no useful purpose to 'point the finger' at any one of them and we felt that we would elicit more candid responses if the people we spoke to were assured of confidentiality. We hope, with the following results, that we can present you with a Snapshot' of current practices in the hospitals we surveyed. We hope also that it will be a starting point for a more detailed study in the future. Whilst we will comment throughout on our observations, we hope that you will largely draw your own conclusions from our findings.