Nelson nurses critical of hospital course loss

Press, 12 April 1983, Page 23

Nelson nurses critical of hospital course loss

The loss of hospital-based nurse training courses in Nelson 10 years ago has left a lot to be desired, says the regional nurses’ Public Service Association representative in Nelson, Mr Douglas Monks. In a letter to the editor of “Hospital” magazine, the journal of the Hospital Boards’ Association, Mr Monks said that Nelson was chosen as a pilot area for polytechnic training courses for nurses.

As a result, in 1973, Nelson lost all its hospitalbased nurse-training courses, apart from a 12month enrolment course for community nurses (formerly known as nurse aids). “For once in its history,

Nelson is a decade ahead of the rest of New Zealand and is in a position to show the rest of the country how health services might look 10 years after the closing of the last hospital-based nurse-training facility,” Mr Monks said.

“The picture here now leaves a lot to be desired, and has prompted a desperate attempt on the part of the local psychopaedic nurses to restart their hos-pital-based training school,” he said.

The move was not popular with the New Zealand Nurses’ Association, or administration staff, who had favoured getting rid of the hospital-based training schools and replacing them

with polytechnic nurse training, he said.

Nelson nurses were not “anti-polytechnic nurse training,” he said. “But noone has yet given us any valid or realistic reasons why the two types of training cannot co-exist.” Mr Monks said that the annual intakes of nurses at the polytechnic were less than half of those previously taken in for training under the Nelson Hospital Board, while the number of tutors had more than doubled. “This has created a situation where the demand for nurses can in no way be supplied by the polytechnic facilities alone,” he said.