Survey On N.Z. Nursing System

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32351, 17 July 1970, Page 2

Survey On N.Z. Nursing System

Dr Helen Carpenter, a nurse who obtained a doctorate before returning to her old school of nursing to become director, is to study and report on New Zealand’s system of basic nursing education.

She is in New Zealand at the invitation of the Government, on a three-month assignment as a World Health Organisation consultant, says a news release from the Department of Health. She will visit Christchurch hospitals and the University of Canter bury. Dr Carpenter qualified as a nurse at the University of Toronto School of Nursing Later, she graduated bachelor of science, in nursing,

Dr Carpenter said that the school of nursing was one of seven health sciences divisions of the university. The others were medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, hygiene, physical and health education and food sciences.

from Columbia University, New York, and completed a master’s degree in public health at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Publie Health. Child Health

For her doctorate from Columbia University, her thesis was on maternal and child health.

“I examined the experience of mothers after they had left hospital with their infants—their needs for health care and what in fact they were 1 receiving," Dr Carpenter said recently.

“I found that health services were poorly co-ordin-ated and misunderstood by many mothers. Not able to get the help they wanted, the mothers turned to neighbours for advice, which was not always sound.

“Nurses and doctors did not always give the'service that was needed because of

deficiencies in their education,” she said. Dr Carpenter has been director of the University of Toronto School of Nursing since 1962. The school has just celebrated 50 years of nursinf; education at the University of Toronto. It has offeree 1 a bachelor’s degree foi 25 yeaia and this year will introduce a master’s course. Nurses’ Studies “Nurses need to study the social and biological sciences and how to apply them to patient care,” she said. “They should learn to inter-relate their theoretical knowledge with their practical experience. One must not divorce these two kinds of education.”