NURSES' CONDITIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 227, 22 September 1920, Page 4

NURSES' CONDITIONS.

Everybody who takes an interest in hospitals and the work of nurses will be glad to learn that the Inspector-General of Hospitals considers that the working week for nurses in public hospitals should be fixed at six days, and that nurses should have a minimum annual holiday of three weeks. We should say that if any women workers deserved one clear day off in seven it was nurses, and it is a reflection on both the Department and hospitals _oards, and on the public behind these institutions, that this was not granted universally years ago. Does anyone suppose that if nurses were ou the same level as factory workers they would have been treated like this for so long? We had occasion some little time ago to ventilate the grievances of the Auckland nurses, and we may take this opportunity of congratulating the Auckland Board on having already decided to grant this day of rest, and on being, according to the chairman's statement, the first Board in New Zealand to do so. But effect cannot be given to the resolution until the necessary building accommodation has 'been obtained, and building waits on finance, and finance waits on the Government. Mr. Massey may have overlooked things like this when he said yesterday that "it might not be a bad thing if the local bodies were checked for a little time" in their borrowing. However, the main thing is to have a sLx-day standard set throughout the Dominion for a class of workers whose" work is difficult, arduous, often unpleasailt, and sometimes dangerous, and from whom a high standard of competence is expected.