Training plan pleases nurses

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33064, 3 November 1972, Page 10

Training plan pleases nurses

Nurses were delighted about the Government’s decision on nursing education, the national president of the New Zealand Nurses Association (Mrs M. Bazley) said in a statement last evening.

Mrs Bazley was commenting on the pilot scheme for the revised system of nursing education, to be introduced next year. Details were announced last night by the Minister of Health (Mr Adams-Schneider). In 1973, 120 nurses will begin a three-year course in Wellington and Christchurch. The 60 students at the Christchurch course will be enrolled at the Christchurch Technical Institute. The study programme mapped out for the student nurses would cover three academic years, Mr AdamsSchneider said. They would be eligible for Department of Health bursaries, similar to those paid to occupational therapy students, with bonding on the same basis, or the normal technical institute bursaries, without bonding. “The study programme has been planned to provide for a balance between theoretical and practical clinical work, the latter not only in hospitals but also in places in the community where nursing care is provided. “The pilot scheme will enable the new system of training to be compared with the existing training programmes conducted by hospital boards which will continue as at present,” Mr Adams-Schnei-der said.

Mrs Bazley commented: “We see this as the beginning of a new system of nursing education which will lead to an improvement in patient care.

“The health services cannot be maintained without adequately prepared nurses, and we are pleased that the Government has recognised that a beginning must be made to improve the present situation.

“The Minister’s announcement is in line with what the New Zealand Nurses Association and the New Zealand Student Nurses’ Association have been requesting, and both organisations will be taking an active interest in the development of the new system,” Mrs Bazley said.

Concrete Institute.— Officers elected at the annual meeting of the New Zealand Pre-stressed Concrete Institute were: President, Mr N. W. Allardice (Auckland); vice-president, Mr R. W. Irwin (Masterton); councillors, Messrs R. A. Carr, L. G. Cormack and J. B. Whittaker (Auckland), A. R. MacGibbon (Wellington), and Professor R. Park (University of Canterbury).