Knell sounds for nursing school

Press, 10 November 1983, Page 3

Knell sounds for nursing school

A death knell is sounding for the hospital-based Christchurch School of Nursing. Members of the North Canterbury Hospital Board who visited Wellington six weeks ago to argue for the preservation of the school have had a sobering reply from the Minister of Health, Mr Malcolm.

His three-page letter listed the difficulties the board faced if it retained the school in spite of the “inevitable” switch from hospital-based schools to polytechnic comprehensive nursing training. Student quotas for the Christchurch school have twice been trimmed this year for future intakes, at the request of the Health Department, but the board was clinging to the hope that the three main cities could still support a dual training system. However, Mr Malcolm said it was up to the board to develop new strategies if the school was to survive.

“If it is not possible to overcome these difficulties, the board must consider the steps it will take to phase out the school,” he said. The 'chairman of the board’s health services committee, Mrs L. C. Gardiner, said yesterday that the “writing was on the wall.”

A decision on the school’s fate would have to be made soon. The committee had already been asked by the policy committee to .consider the implications of the national phasing out of hbspitalrbased training. “The likelihood of getting any practical support from the Health Department or any other source is simply not there,” she said. Consistent pressure had been applied to transfer all nurse training to the Christchurch Polytechnic. Regulations also kept changing in favour of the new system. The board’s chairman, Mr T. C. Grigg, said pressure from the department and the New Zealand Nurses’ Association had been so

great that he thought the board should seriously consider whether it could retain the school. The Government had promised a full report on nursing education before it went ahead . with the transfer. Mr Grigg said he believed that that report had not been finished. Mr Malcolm said in his letter that he would not guarantee whether the Christchurch school and any others could continue. “If hospital boards had held similar views to those of North Canterbury, the transfer would simply have ceased,” he ,said w . , “You need-to consider the consequences of maintaining the hospital-based * programme in the circumstances which will prevail in five years time. There will be very few, if any other, hospital schools remaining and you will have difficulties over the recruitment of tutors.” Students would be concerned about how their qualifications measured up in a work-force increasingly staffed by comprehensive nurses.

The Christchurch Polytechnic would take on more nursing students as other regional hospial schools, such as Timaru, closed. This could also lead to problems when the board had to decide on the clinical experience hospitals provided for comprehensive students and its own student nurses. “If the board wishes to maintain its school, it must deal with these issues and the more immediate concerns about the school’s pass rate and accommodation,” Mr Malcolm said. The medical superintendent of Christchurch Hospital, Dr D. A. Andrews, said that the present school buildings had a big effect on planning for the stage three redevelopment of the hospital. Building the second phase of the new main building, now scheduled to start after 1988, depended on demolishing the school,

to make way. The board has been told it can expect no Government support for building a new school. Mr Malcolm also warned it that there was little purpose in suggesting a student-based comprehensive training school on a hospital campus because it would be too expensive. Mrs Gardiner said after the meeting that she disputed Mr Malcolm’s comment about the school’s pass rate. Students had not fared so well in the last'nursing examination but the school’s pass rates were usually up to national standard and often better thqn compre-hensive-trained students.