'Fires, abuse feared by psychiatric nurses’

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32968, 14 July 1972, Page 2

'Fires, abuse feared by psychiatric nurses’

.GVeiv Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, July 13. Patients setting fires in wards and attacking hospital staff, and the fear of a patient’s committing suicide, were some of the pressures under which nurses worked at Porirua Hospital, said Sister Averil S. Wix, a psychiatric nurse at the hospital.

She was giving evidence to the Royal Commission on hospital and related services today.

The commission is study- . ing the salary differential be- | tween psychiatric nurses and general nurses. Miss Wix was testifying in support of a submission by | the Public Service Association that the salary differen|tial be maintained. ! She told the commission she had been at Porirua Hospital for two years. She is also a registered general nurse in the United Kingdom, and has worked in child welfare. She is studying for a B.A. degree in sociology and education at Victoria Univer- ] sity. Miss Wix said that psychia- ! trie nurses were subject to a lot of verbal abuse and .obscene language. This par- ] ticularly bothered younger nurses, she said. “I’ve found that when student nurses are looking for someone to talk to, they don’t bemoan the heavy “work load, but instead try to ’] justify their work in the light > of someone’s verbal abuse,” ’ she said. “They interpret this > as a fault of theirs, instead ’of the patient’s unreceptive-

ness. This causes conflict within the nurse.” Physical abuse also took place at the hospital, and nurses were assaulted on a number of occasions, she said. “Many psychopathic patients are sent there by the courts,” Miss Wix said. “They’re not sent there for helping little old ladies across the street.” Last Saturday, fires were set in two places in the ward of the adolescent unit, causing considerable damage, Miss Wix said. In comparing the stress experienced by general nurses and psychiatric nurses, Miss] Wix said that in emergencies] the general nurse had de- j fined procedures and explicit instructions to follow, but the psychiatric nurse must] often rely on her own inter-, pretation of a case. Overcrowding was another problem at the hospital. Miss Wix said the tre-i mendous pressure was one of ] the reasons why the “drop-! out” rate among psychiatric; nurse students was high. Ai report quoted to the commis-l sion said that 56.7 per cent]

of the psychiatric nursing students in a three-year course dropped out, compared with 28.1 per cent for general nurses.