NAPIER HOSPITAL INQUIRY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 24 June 1937, Page 7

NAPIER HOSPITAL INQUIRY

EVBIDENCE BEFORE ROYAL COMMISSION TRAINING OF NURSES [By Telegraph —Press Association] NAPIER, This Day. The greater portion of the morning sitting of the Royal Commission inquiring into the affairs of the Hawkes Bay Hospital Board was occupied with the statements of two nurses, whose evidence and names were suppressed. When the Commission emerged from the camera investigation the inquiry proceeded to inquire into the training of nurses.

In reply to Mr Foden, Miss L. M. Croft, matron, detailed the officers at the hospital and the preliminary training of nurses. A sister tutor was the person who gave the lectures in the preliminary school. Mr Foden: “Have you had any difficulty in maintaining a full quota of trainees?” —“Latterly I have. The number of applications is not so numerous now.” “Has the training school at Napier a good reputation?”—“As far as I am aware.”

The opinion that the nurses, in writing to the secretary of the Hawkes Bay Hospital Board regarding the betterment of their conditions, had adopted a course entirely opposed to the recognised practice, was expressed by Mr E. D. Mosley, chairman of the Royal Commission inquiring into the Hospital Board affairs at the opening of the sitting this morning. “I wish to remove a misunderstanding that my be present in the minds of even counsel,” said Mr Mosley. “It may be that the misunderstanding is present in the minds of nurses, and I want to remove it. It is a matter of gravest importance to the nurses themselves. They should have taken the matron into their confidence after exhausting all other avenues and before adopting the extreme course of writing to the Hospital Board and forwarding it to the Health Department. We understand that they have erred in ignorance and also we sympathise with many of their reasonable requests, and 1 am sure the board did likewise, but we consider the method adopted would in our opinion destroy the internal administration of any hospital if adopted.”