“Exciting days” for new tutor

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33120, 10 January 1973, Page 5

“Exciting days” for new tutor

These are exciting days for 33-year-old Miss Alison .Johnston, who will be tutor-in-charge of direct nursing and supervisor of clinical studies for the experimental nursing training scheme at the Christchurch Technical Institute. But sometimes, she says, when it gets hard to sleep at night she wonders what she has let herself in for. The scheme, along with its counterpart at the Wellington Polytechnic, will begin in March, and will be a pioneering step in the long journey to change the education of nurses. For Miss Johnston, a tniversity graduate born in Ashburton, the position is a tremendous challenge — the culmination of a personal education process which she undertook with the consciousness of impending changes in nursing. She feels, also, a very strong sense of responsibility to meet the expectations of the many who have worked long years to bring a new outlook to nursing education. If the scheme is successful, she sees it opening new career prospects in tutoring. It is also a part of the process which will, she believes, bring about a new era for expert clinical nurses who want to advance in their chosen

career as nurses rather than administrators. She hopes, also, that more men will be encouraged to take up nursing as a career (one of the new course tutors' is a man, and there are male student applicants). “There’s a place for men in nursing.” she said, “and we need them.” NEW IMAGE Miss Johnston also hopes the image of the nurse will increasingly become a .professional one. She considers this can come about without any loss of the traditional humanitarian qualities, which would be in integral part of the professional. After her graduation from the University of Otago in 1960. Miss Johnston became health education officer for the Department of Health in Gisborne. As well as diplomas in general nursing and midwifery, she holds a New Zealand Diploma in Nursing, and is completing her M.A. in education this year. She spent three years tutoring for the North Canterbury Hospital Board, and took a graduate course at the Christchurch Teachers’ College. The new generation of student nurses at the Technical Institute would be “students first and foremost.” she predicted yesterday, unlike the studepts in hospitalbased schools’where the primary demand is service rather than education. A firm believer in having nursing education in the I main-stream of the education system. Miss Johnston nellieves improved patient care

i ; will be the result of bringing student nurses out of rhe : I “closeted hospital environ- ■ ment.” • BETTER CARE" | “And that’s what these ' changes are for — to get betI ter patient care. This is part i of a world-wide movement, and a tremendous step forward,” she said. Under the present system ’ young nurses were often 1 called upon to carry out nurs- ’ ing duties for wh’ch they ’ were not theoretically pre- ; pared. They were also tso--1 iated from the wider com- > munity, and tended to think 1 of illness occurring only in hospital. 1 The comprehensive, three--1 year course includes study in ; the physical, biological, and r behavioural sciences, with ’ training in theoretical, labo- ' ratory, and clinical situations. 1 Miss Johnston emphasises the 1 practical aspects of training, * which will be carried out in ’ hospitals and Department of * Health agencies. ■ Designed to enable the * nurse to see the patients as a ? whole person, the course 1 should, Miss Johnston hopes, . help to change the prevalent ‘ i attitude that a nurse must ’ I always be “doing something.” < “Often the patient is the .most grateful for a nurse who ■'will simply sit and listen, but ' | nowadays nurses feel guilty ■'if they are not actively doing 'something.” she said. j “Inter-personal relation- ’ ships can often be very diffi- ■ I cult for young nurses, 1 especially if they nave prob■|lems in their own lives. They s tend, because they are not able to cope with their own feelings, to cut feelings off and adopt a task-orientated approach.

NOT PREPARED “Today, nurses are thrust into the less pleasant situations in nursing, for which they are often not adequately I prepared,” she said. Although young people today had a greater awareness and concern for the more bitter aspects of life, meeting such situations head on was often difficult. If the experimental schemes are successful, they will be the beginning of a long-term programme to transfer the training of nurses from the control of hospital l boards to the Department of Education. Miss Johnston sees a nursetraining course within the university as a necessary and natural development, producing perhaps 15 per cent of the nursing work force. The rest, she believes, will come from extended technical in- 1 stitute courses. “We must have a flexible system to educate nurses for rapid changes; education for a person who will be nursing, in 15 or 20 years time.” she, said.