“Everything we do must be with the patient in mind,” Dr. Malcom MacEachern wrote. “The patient is the sole reason for the existence of the medical profession and hospitals.”
Malcom T. MacEachern (1881–1956) is one of the totem figures in the history of North American hospital administration. Born in Argyle, Ontario, he has been described as a “world figure in the hospital field” and “the Founder of Modern Hospital Administration”. Like Alice Wrinch and Jessie MacKenzie (a contemporary and Ladies Superintendent at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria), he was a schoolteacher before he turned to medicine. His career in the United States was stellar. He was President of the American Hospital Association (1924-1925), Associate Director of the American College of Surgeons and the writer of a thousand page manual of Hospital Administration—Hospital Organization and Management. When he died in 1956 he was lauded as “Mr. Hospital.”
Less well known are years MacEachern spent in British Columbia, where he built a reputation as an important reformer. From 1913 to 1923, when he left to go to the United States, he was General Superintendent of Vancouver General Hospital. In 1918 guided the hospital through the Spanish Flu pandemic. He had been an active member of the American Hospital Association since 1915, an organization of which Dr. Horace Wrinch had been a member since 1908. His experience there and his knowledge of how such an organization improved hospital standards led him, together with others, including Dr.Wrinch and Jessie MacKenzie from Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria, to set up the British Columbia Hospital Association in 1917 or early in 1918. MacEachern was its first President, serving for two terms. Dr. Wrinch succeeded him as President for two terms. MacEachern was also instrumental in standardizing nurses’ training in the province and in the establishment of the nursing program at the University of British Columbia. He also pioneered the system of medical case records at VGH and promoted the use of it throughout all BC hospitals.
He left British Columbia in 1923 to be a bigger fish in a larger pond. “The contribution made by Dr. MacEachern by his originating program of the American College of Surgeons,” his obituary said “has no parallel in hospital history.”
A worthy son of Argyle, Ontario.