New Nurses’ Home

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 34, 4 November 1937, Page 5

New Nurses’ Home

Light-Proof Curtains For Those On Night Duly Among Improvements ■ “Dominion” Special Service.—By Air Mail. London, October 15. LIBRARY, smoking-room and swimming pool are among the ' amenities in Riddell House, the new nurses’ home for St. Thomas’s Hospital, which Queen Mary opened this week. Each nurse will have a bed-sitting room with a divan bed and an enclosed wash-basin with running water. There has been a great improvement in nurses’ homes all over the countrj’ since the publication of a report by the Lancet Commission in 1930 on the conditions of the nursing profession generally. Many of the homes now contain special shampoo-rooms, commonrooms, which can be converted into dance halls, and rooms for quiet study. The new nurses’ home for Westminster Hospital, which will be opened by the Queen early next year, has been designed by a committee under the Dowager Lady Harcourt, and the nurses themselves have had a say in the decorations and arrangements. Each nurse will have her own room on the sunny side of the new building, and special “light-proof” curtains which do not keep out the fresh air will be a great boon to night nurses trying to sleep during the day. Two of the common-rooms, panelled in soft grey, can be thrown into one and used ,foy dances and other entertainments. A broad recessed terrace runs the length of these rooms; The nurses’ home will be connected with the new Westminster Hospital by a subway.