A Nursing Centenary

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29239, 24 June 1960, Page 12

A Nursing Centenary

Most New Zealanders who take the efficiency of hospitals for granted rarely pause to consider how short has been the history of the nursing profession as they now know it, and how recent is the honourable status that it enjoys. On either June 24 or July 9, 1860 —the date is uncertain—the first training school for nurses was opened at St Thomas’s Hospital, London. The centennial of this event the beginning of professional nursing, is being marked in London by an exhibition and the issue of a short history of the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas s. Nobody was better aware than Florence Nightingale of the need to train nurses adequately and to attract suitable recruits by enhancing their status. Ln 1855 £44,000 was raised in Britain by public subscription as a tribute to Miss Nightingale’s services during the Crimean War. The purpose of the fund was to establish a nurses’ school under Miss Nightingale’s direction. But Miss Nightingale, preoccupied with efforts to improve military hygiene, refused to divert her energies to the establishment of a school. Finally, in December, 1359, she asked that a committee, supported by her advice, should organise the training school at St. Thomas s. where she had found a power-, ful ally in *he matron, Mrs Sarah Wardroper. The school opened with 15 trainees; later there were to be two kinds of probationers, “ ladies ” and “ nurses ”, of whom the former,

it was hoped, would become superintendents. Miss Nightingale’s remarkable personality was stamped indelibly upon the school and its products. Her influence persists in the strong and sometimes irksome discipline of present-day nurses’ homes. At first, instruction was sketchy; but under the guidance of Miss Nightingale, Mrs Wardroper (the widow of a surgeon), and Henry Bonham Carter, secretary of the organising committee. a better-defined and more comprehensive curriculum was gradually evolved. In its early years the training school had few applicants for admission. As the success of its methods became obvious its trainees were sought eagerly by other hospitals, both British and overseas. For several decades the improvement of hospitals was the cause closest to the hearts of Miss Nightingale and Mrs Wardroper; their policy, wherever possible, was to supply groups of trained staff who could themselves introduce training schemes in their new environments. Since the early days there have been many changes in the training of nurses—at St Thomas’s as well as throughout the world. But all the ancillary details pale into insignificance beside the Nightingale traditions, which continue to imbue the nursing profession with its highest ideals These traditions, much more than the prosaic establishment of a training system, are the inspiration of this year’s centen nial observances and the best guarantee of the profession s future lustre.