SUPPLY OF NURSES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 34, 8 February 1913, Page 10

SUPPLY OF NURSES.

THE SHORTAGE DISAPPEARING REASSURING FIGURES. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, this day. A shortage of nurses has been for some years the anxiety of doctors and hospital authorities in the Dominion, but a much more satisfactory position has now been reached. The ideal proportion of nurses, as indicated by the report of the PublicHealth and Hospitals Department, is one nurse to every 1.000 inhabitants. The actual position to-day is aa follows: Trained and registered nurses, 1,326; untrained midwives, 085; trained midwives, 494. To show how rapidly the demand for trained midwives has been met, the following figures are interesting. The total in 1907 was only 102; on March 31, 1!)12, the number was 415, and no fewer than "7 were added last year, 55 of whom were trained in the Dominion at the St. Helens Hospitals, the Townley Maternity Home. Gisborne. Alexandra Home, Christchurch, and Forth Street Home, Dunedin. Some of the New Zealand candidates achieved the distinction of earning 100 per cent of possible marks both in written and practical subjects at the recent examinations. The supply of nurses is steadily improving, and the scarcity, which once caused real anxiety, is now disappearing. "There has been a considerable influx of nurses from the United Kingdom, and we don't find the same difficulty in filling hospital nppointments now." explained the Inspector General of Hospitals to your representative. "As regards midwives. though, we have been short, and we feared that when the Midwives' Act came into force we could not get sufficient trained women to take the places of the old unregistered midwives. But there is not much risk of a shortage. We adJ mitted 37 trained midwives recently."