Extensive changes in nursing school

Press, 29 May 1981, Page 6

Extensive changes in nursing school

PA ' Dunedin The Otago Hospital Board will make immediate and extensive changes in the Dunedin School of Nursing. The changes were called for in the report of the working party looking into problems in the school.

The report criticises the board’s administration, and blames trfe board and its officers for the problems in the school and the failure to solve the problems effectively.

The recommendations include a completely new system of control for the school, designed to avoid delays and clarify the chain of authority.

The calibre of student nurses is vindicated, and widespread recommendations are made to ensure a more consistent and comprehensive student evaluation system in an attempt to avoid high examination failures and subsequent dismissals.

Tutors come in for criticism in some instances, with recommendations made to improve teaching skills and tighten requirements for future tutorial appointments. Changes to the curriculum are recommended to broaden the teaching programme and make clinical teaching less “haphazard." The working party expressed willingness to help the board informally in making the changes, and it proposed to undertake a formal review in six months to ensure changes had been made.

A nursing education committee, set up under the report, has been asked' to report to the next board meeting on whether student intakes should be reduced to one a year from April, 1981, or immediately, thus cancelling the September. 1981, general and psychiatric courses.

The chairman of the board, Mrs D. R. Fraser, said that it accepted full responsibility for the problems that developed- in the Nursing School, but she did not expect that board members or

officers would offer their resignations.

The board had adopted the full spirit of the report and would implement it. "We will expect to see a vast improvement in 3 the whole of our teaching pro-, endures," Mrs Fraser said. “But I do not see that the resignation of the board is going to help solve the problem.”

The working party’s investigation led to an offer of -reinstatement to 16 nurses dismissed because of the school’s evaluation policy. Mrs Fraser said that 13 had accepted reinstatement.’ The issue of compensation for the dismissed nurses has yet to be discussed.