NURSES APPEAL

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 54, Issue 32653, 3 December 1945, Page 3

NURSES APPEAL

termination of service WITH THAMES HOSPITAL BOARD Two appeals by nurses to terminate their positions at the Thames Public Hospital were heard by the Industrial Manpower Committee, which sat in the Thames Magistrate's Courthouse on Tuesday. The committee consisted of Messrs A. Campbell (chairman), N. E. Crimp and K. M. Simpson. Also present were Messrs R. Lydford, secretary and Crown representative, and R. W. Chappell, District Manpower Officer, from Paeroa.

Both nurses wished to commence duties at other hospitals.

Decision was reserved in the case of Miss R. N. Taurau, employed by the

Thames Hospital Board as staff nurse, who wished to take up a position at the Rawene Public Hospital.

Mr I’. Jensen, who appeared for Miss Taurau, said that she had been offered a position at the Rawene Hospital, which was near her home. Nurse Taurau had been a nurse at the hospital for the last six years and would like to go home some time in December if she could. At present there were at the Thames Hospital a number of third-year trainees who would be sitting examinations in December. If these nurses passed they would become staff nurses. A telegram from the Director of Nursing, Miss Lambie, supporting the release of Miss Taurau from the Thames Hospital as from the end of January, was given to the committee by Mr Jensen.

“The position of nurses was desperate at present” said the secretary

Of the Thames Hospital Board, Mr A. L. Neighbour. "We have not the wailing list for trainees that we did have. Tn Decenfber there will lie seven nurses sitting for their examinations. Nurse Taurau, who passed her examination as a trained nurse about four and a half months ago, has given only that time to the hospital as a trained nurse.” A nurse trainee, Miss D. McGrath, was granted her termination from the Thames Hospital Board after she had completed three months in the Coromandel Hospital. “As I had failed in my examination I wished to return to the Cambridge Hospital, where I had been before coming to Thames,” said Miss McGrath. The chairman asked Miss McGrath her age. Miss McGrath: Nineteen years. x Giving evidence for the board, Mr Neighbour said that one of the main problems of the board was to staff its outside hospitals. Coromandel and Mercury Bay were not popular with the nurses, and the board had never been able to maintain a full staff at both these plages. Miss McGrath consented to the chairman’s' suggestion that she spend three months at the Coromandel Hospital before release.

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