MAY NOT TRAVEL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 84, 9 April 1940, Page 9

MAY NOT TRAVEL.

REGISTERED NURSES.

GOVERNMENT IMPOSES BAN

SHORTAGE IN TIME OF WAR.

Owing to the shortage of registered nurses in the Dominion, and in view of the number required for military purposes overseas, the Government lias decided that registered nurses shall not be given permits to travel outside New Zealand, unless it can be shown that they havo grave j>ersonal reasons for doing so. Advice to this effect was received by the Hospital Board at its meeting last evening in a memorandum from the Director of the Division of Xursin", Mise M. I. Lambie.

In the past, the memorandum stated, it liad been common for 100 to 150 nurses to leave New Zealand each A r ear but it was considered that the new provision would improve the situation, and that with the addition to the re.jri«ter of approximately 400 nurses qualifying each year a satisfactory position could bo maintained.

The suggestion had been made by the Department that, during the war period, registered nnreee, who had married, but

whose husbands wore on active service, should be employed if necessary on a living-out basis, and nurecs in training, who had married, and whose husbands had left New Zealand, should be e.ncouraged to return and complete their training. Miss Lanibie explained that mental hospitals were to be graded as B grade training schools, and a scheme had bc.en inaugurated for the training of nursing aide, which would assist to bridge the gap between the time a jrirl left school and entered a hospital for general training, nnd also to provide a training for girls who did not possess the general education to undertake the usual course. Provision was also made in the amended Act for the training of male nurses.