Status of Nurses

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 257, 26 July 1930, Page 13

Status of Nurses

gi Fi —Your correspondent “Without Prejudice” shows n lamentable ignorance of the nature of the proposed amendment of the Nurses’ Registration Bill. Only hospitals, privately owned, that comply in all respects with the conditions laid down for approval of public hospital training-schools, are eligible for approval. The "well-bred rich" are not the objective of such hospitals that would train their nurses; the primary object of their accepting paying patients is to provide the means whereby the poor may be treated free and people of slender means may get private-hospital attention at a rate similar to that charged now in the public hospitals. "The world-wide status given to nurses trained in public hospitals” is good; until the fact is absorbed that there are no State hospitals in England or the United States. All hospitals that are trainingschools are conducted, not by doctors or surgeons who have “arrived,” but . by charitable and religious organisations who maintain them for the good of humanity. Their upkeep is provided by voluntary donations and the fees of paying patients. Once the public realises that every approval of such large voluntary hospitals in this country will make a considerable reduction in the rates that support the public hospitals, they will see the sheer fallacy of the "arguments” put forward by “Without Prejudice” and si m i larly uninformed critics of the proposed legislation.—l am, etc., PONEKE, July 23.