A Cambridge city hospital official testified yesterday that interns and residents improve the hospital's patient care, a statement that their lawyer said will aid the doctors in their effort to unionize.

The testimony was at a hearing on a petition of the Cambridge Hospital's interns and residents asking the Massachusetts Labor Relations Commission to certify their House Officers Association as a collective bargaining unit.

Employees or Students?

The central issue in the hearings is whether or not the interns and residents are employees as defined in the Massachusetts law that allows municipal employees to form unions.

If the Commission certifies the House Officers Association, the City of Cambridge would be forced to engage in collective bargaining with the association.

The City of Cambridge contends that interns and residents are students, while the association's lawyer maintains that they are city employees who deliver essential professional services to the hospital and the city.

Dr. John E. Mack, chief of the psychiatry service at the Cambridge Hospital, testified yesterday afternoon about the structure of the service's residency program, its hiring procedures and the services performed by residents.

Emily A. Spieler '69, the lawyer for the House Officers Association, asked Mack what the hospital would do if it did not have psychiatric residents, and he responded that the staff psychiatrists would have to assume a much greater workload.

Together

Under questioning by the city's lawyer, Edward Bogorad, Mack said the residency program provided "an excellent opportunity for training and education and for improving patient care--the two go together."

Mack was the city's last witness in the hearings that began Wednesday, and Speiler plans to call Dr. Gregory R. Wagner '69, secretary-treasurer of the House Officers Association as her first witness tomorrow.

Harvard Affiliation

The Cambridge Hospital has been affiliated with the Harvard Medical School as a teaching hospital since 1966, and Wagner said yesterday all the hospital's interns have non-paying appointments at the Medical School as Clinical Fellows in Medicine and teach some Harvard students.

The Cambridge Hospital House Officers Association is the first organization of interns and residents to file a certification petition with the state commission.