Psychiatric Nurses Needed

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30936, 17 December 1965, Page 2

Psychiatric Nurses Needed

Planning ways to make the present psychiatric nursing course more attractive to “alert, intelligent” young girls is one of the main tasks ahead of Mrs M. C. Bazley, newly appointed matron of Sunnyside Hospital.

“We are quite short staffed at the moment We need to attract girts just leaving

school, with School Certificate or University Entrance,” Mrs Bazley said yesterday. “To me, psychiatry is the most fascinating form of nursing and by concentrating the training on the therapeutic approach we can make it more exciting and stimulating.”

The more menial tasks could be left to lay people, said Mrs Bazley. She would like to see more group work with the patients, which would be supervised by the nurses. “To get a better service for psychiatric patients we must streamline the trainee nurse's course, end have new courses for the graduate nurses so they can keep up-to-date with modern treatments.”

Mrs Bazley said she was very pleased with the senior staff at Sunnyside Hospital. "They are well informed, loyal and hard working,” she said.

She also had been overwhelmed by the amount of work done by Christchurch people for the hospital. “So many gifts have come in. It’s just amazing,” she said. "This is something I have not encountered in other New Zealand psychiatric hospitals.” The days when patients should be isolated were past. Mrs Bazley said. More community involvement for patients at Sunnyside was a necessity. “We are having a meeting with all the organisations associated with the hospital, so that their activities can be coordinated. There will be more concerts, outings, and “adoptions,” for it's those little things that matter to a person who is in hospital for years,” she said. One of the hospital’s greatest problems, in common with many psychiatric hospitals in New Zealand, was the many elderly, inflrm patients who had to be admitted. "This means we must have

a waiting list for many who need treatment,” Mrs Bazley said. "Often, too, girls who are interested in psychiatric work do not want to nurse the elderly. Later, we are hoping to have a separate nursing body for this work.” Mrs Bazley did her psychiatric training at Oakley Hospital in Auckland, and her

general nursing training and maternity at Thames Hospital. She has just completed her diploma of nursing course at the Post Graduate School of Nursing in Wellington, where she specialised in education of nurses. Before her appointment to Sunnyside, she was assistant matron at Seacliff Hospital near Dunedin.