Nurses Must Live In

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31129, 4 August 1966, Page 3

Nurses Must Live In

(N.Z. Press Association) DUNEDIN, Aug. 3. Third-year student nurses in Dunedin will have to live in again from next year. For almost two years they have been allowed to live away from the nurses* home at the Dunedin and Wakari Hospitals. At present 130 student nurses are living out, most of them in flats. “Some of them are living in substandard conditions,” the matron-in-chief (Miss T. B. Hughes) said today. “The nurses’ first duty

Is to their patients. They carry a heavy responsibility in the wards, and they must be fit. “We feel they are better living where they don’t have commitments like cooking and cleaning. “We have to think of the nurses’ health. If they become short of money when they’re living out, the first thing they give up is food, and then they get sick. “In the last two years the sickness rate of the nurses living out has increased.” Another important fae-

tor, Miss Hughes said, was that girls were not studying as well when they lived out The last finals results had been good, but there had been a high failure rate in the two previous examinations. Because of the number of nurses living out there had been up to 70 vacant rooms in the nurses’ homes, Miss Hughes said. “This is a waste. Our nurses are taking up flats which are needed by other students.” In the nurses* home they would pay £4 a week, with meals and washing included.