TRAINING MIDWIVES

Feilding Star, Volume 7, Issue 2377, 2 December 1929, Page 7

TRAINING MIDWIVES

SYSTEM NOT SATISFACTORY

(Per Press Association) Dunedin, Nov. 29

The training of midwives was pre"minently brought before the iheeting of the Otago Hospital Board hist night by Mrs Marshall Macdonald, who said that she brought up .the matter ias one who was deeply interested in nursing, while at the same time she was not unmindful of the interest and welfare of the patients The present system’, would act- against the best interests of the hospital and they would not be able to get trainees ~rf a nurse were ambitious and wished to take the midwifery training. It meant that after taking the maternity course here she had to go to another centre and have • a repetition of her training. “The - whole training is cumbersome and 'chaotic.’’ continued Mrs Macdonald, “and I say that with a full Isdnso .of ‘responsibility.'” She went on to say that vromen v.oukl not. go in for this training because they uotild have to spend such a long, time. The whole system needed revising, and until the hospital' boards did something there would be no change.' Tlici change should be by. training midwifery nurses and. not by turning out maternity nurses, a system which introduced a. sort ,'of “half-baked” nurse. She luped members would vote for reinstatement of the training in Dunedin. The present system seriously affected their institutions because tuey could not get burses to train.

Air Ross:. Tile maternity nurses’ certificate is very unsatisfactory; The chairman remarked that there wits a great deal in what Mrs .Macdonald lmd said, find suggested that the.matter should be referred to the Finance Committee. This course was adopted.