TRAINING OF NURSES.

Evening Star, Issue 20585, 10 September 1930, Page 8

TRAINING OF NURSES.

The Health Committee of the House has dealt, faithfully with what may be called, for convenience, the Training of Nurses Bill. As the result of demands made for the fullest safeguards before the right of training nurses should be extended to private hospitals, the Bill of two clauses which the Minister introduced last year was enlarged into quite a respectable-looking measure before it appeared this' session. It has been revised and enlarged again as the result of the committee’s work on it, always in the direction of sharper or additional restriction of the right proposed to be given, till it might seem doubtful if any legislative proposal was ever so safeguarded before. As it was first baldly announced, the principle of the measure seemed to have much less chance of being acceptable to Parliament than the Unemployment Bill, which, after a long-drawn-out struggle, has now passed the House. The position is altered, as it is now protected, and those who have been pressing for the measure will bo feeling new hopes, probably, of seeing it on the Statute Book, though a long time almost certainly must elapse before it will have much benefit for them. A private hospital, it is now provided, will not be permitted to undertake training unless it is also very much a public one. ft must have forty beds made available to the public without charge or for an inadequate fee. There is no chance, therefore, of hospitals run purely for gain ever aspiring to the privilege. The right will be extended only to such hospitals as are exercising it already in Australia. In effect, only religious hospitals will have a chance of qualifying. It is further provided that the number of occupied beds of the public class must not fall below thirty, and the protections which were in the Bill before the committee dealt with it are, of course, retained. Apparently the condition is not included, which was suggested by tho New Zealand Nurses’ Association, that training should bo confined to the public wards, but further amendments will bo possible in the committee stage. The suggestion was made that the purpose of tho Bill would be defeated by requirements now incorporated in it, but that was not established. The Minister was apparently convinced that it would still satisfy the hopes of the largest religious hospitals; and by no one else, that wo are aware of, was it asked for. Not one of tho four largest private—and religious—hospitals in tho dominion, it has been stated on their behalf, considers itself ready or sufficiently equipped to train nurses at present. They desire only affirmation of tho principle, so that the lines of their future development may be definitely assured. The status of the profession and the advantages of reciprocal acknowledgment with Great Britain and other countries being safeguarded, the main point left at issue in regard to tho Bill would appear to be whether it is wise for the State to assist the development of religious hospitals to compete with public hospitals, for which costly provision has been made. And objection to tho measure, based on that question, must bo more difficult to take now that the Minister has declared his unalterable opposition to private wards in public hospitals.