More Dental Nurses To Be Trained In S.I

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30063, 22 February 1963, Page 2

More Dental Nurses To Be Trained In S.I

At least 200 more school dental nurses are needed if the New Zealand School Dental Service is to provide full treatment for all children of primary and pre*school age. For this reason dental nurses’ training programmes are to be increased in the South Island by more than 50 per cent

This wm said yesterday at the seventh annual graduation ceremony of nurses from the South Island Dental Nurses’ Training School in Christchurch by the Director of the Health Department’s Division of Dental Health (Dr. G. H. Leslie).

Speaking to graduates, nurse trainees, representatives of the educational and dental professions, and parents, Dr. Leslie said that the New Zealand school dental service was without doubt the best of its kind in the world. But if this standard was to be maintained the present total of about 910 qualified nurses would not be sufficient.

The South Island training school, opened in IMS to hold 100 nurse trainee*, would be stretched to accommodate an additional group of about 28, and next year a special group would be trained in clinical work, he said. But whatever was done in extension of services, the individual responsibilities of each gradue nurse were equally important. In this profession there could be no short cuts, “no running before you can walk," said Dr. Leslie. The external examiner for

the school (Mr C. H. M. Brander) also spoke. The New Zealand school dental service was surely unique, he said. To maintain the present high standard, nurses needed to remember that it was regarded throughout the world as a model. The principal of the school (Mr E. Brebner) told nurses that dentistry was hard to learn and even harder to impart. Mr Brebner paid tribute to the teachers and the parents, whose children, he said, provided the necessary life-blood

of the school’s training programmes. Praising the "remarkable state of efficiency” which the service had reached in its dental care of New Zealand’s youth, the South Island Regional Superintendent of Education (Mr T. M. Archer) said that figures still showed that New Zealanders were “remarkably inefficient in looking after their own teeth." The success of fluoridation in Hastings was such that he could not "for the life of me understand why we don't take the word of the expert in this respect” Instead, dental nurses throughout the Dominion were having to treat 3m fillings each year.