New Techniques A Challenge

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31635, 22 March 1968, Page 2

New Techniques A Challenge

Recent heart transplant operations were dramatic symbols of an era of exciting new medical techniques which presented a dual challenge to nurses, RearAdmiral J. O’G. Ross, Chief of New Zealand Naval Staff, said at the Christchurch School of Nursing graduation ceremony last evening.

Retaining a personal relationship with the patient was even more important ' than remaining up-to-date in the techniques of the profession. Whatever technical competence surrounded him, the patient would respond just as much to the attitude of the nurse, he said. “I more than suspect that the real qualifications for speaking to you tonight are held by my wife, who is a graduate of this school. But the Navy and nursing services do have something in common that it heard less and less in a material age—we both belong to a calling. “Your profession is not a job—so many hours for so much money. The very personal understanding and feeling between a good nurse and her patient is the very essence of your profession. “The nursing service will be demanding on your patience, your courage, and always of your time because you cannot leave a ward and a very sick patient just be-.

cause a clock strikes five,” he said. Admiral Ross said there were parallel demanding disciplines in the naval and nursing services—long hours of watching punctuated by moments of crisis. Discipline Needed “In both there is the need of discipline—the self discipline of endurance—and in the more dramatic moment of crisis a natural and unquestioning response to authority. “A failure in either one of these for a nurse could cost a patient’s life,” he said. There were many interpretations of discipline. Too many saw it as just discomfort imposed by authority, but discipline was a quality of mind. Freedom of behaviour, and from restraints, was not lacking today but there could be no freedom from responsibility. "Tonight you have taken an oath in a responsible profession. Even at the top there is no freedom from discipline. Your matron-in-chief has no freedom from her disciplined responsibilities, not only to her superiors but also to her nurses. "I will not wish you luck —yours is too responsible a profession to rely on that in- '

gradient. But I wish you all the rewards of service. They may not be great in material things, they will lie mainly in your own satisfaction at having answered a calling.