MALE NURSE COURSE

Press, Volume C, Issue 29649, 20 October 1961, Page 18

MALE NURSE COURSE

Younger Men Apply Male nursing was proving popular, and it was unlikely that advertising would be necessary for recruits for the next class, the matron of Burwood Hospital (Miss S. Rolls) said yesterday. A new class would probably be started early next year, with about eight students, she added. The applicants now coming forward tended to be younger . than previously, and some were still at school. Miss Rolls thought this was, on the whole, a good thing. Many of the earlier students were men who had tried something else first, and there tended to be some wastage because these older men quite often decided after a short time in training that nursing was not their niche any more than their previous job. The first students under the new three-year course for State registration were now coming towards the end of their first year, and would take their first professional examination at the beginning ot next month. Three of the original 10 had dropped out during the year, but the others were doing very well at their level of training. By the time these students had graduated, they should be as versatile as a female nurse, Miss Rolls thought. She had heard that in some hospitals the work of a male nurse was looked on as something of that of a male orderly, with an emphasis on such work as bathing male patients, but she believed there was a much wider scope for the profession. Two male nurses who had graduated under the old twoyear course, with an extra year’s special tuition, were now working in the operating theatre at Burwood Hospital.