THE AUCKLAND HOSPITAL AGAIN!

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10507, 29 July 1897, Page 3

THE AUCKLAND HOSPITAL AGAIN!

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, is evident that the pax Britannicu does not extend to the Auckland Hospital. f? It seems as if there never would be peace in • s that blessed institution. And of course the row is about the nurses. People who have f> not seen the nurses are apt to wonder why, -.vi whenever there is a shindy (pardon the word J —it is so expressive) at the Auckland Hos- « pital, the nurses or a nurse is sure to be ,; i| mixed up with it. The fact is that when you -1 get a number of exceedingly pretty young women, of graceful manner, and dressed in a most becoming, not to say bewitching dress, at work in a large institution in which live or work a large number of our sex, there always will be rows. Even when the nurses in the hospitals were neither wellborn nor well - educated, if they were young and pretty, the result was very similar. I remember in the year 1854 • when I was house surgeon to the Stafford County Infirmary, there was a lovely nurse in the female ward, with the most beautiful - £ eyes-but that's another story, as Rudyard Kipling says. The only effectual remedy I ; know is to get hold of a lady superintendent aged not less than 45, of forbidding aspect, and give her a free hand to discharge any nurses whom, for any reason, she deems unfit. In six months she will wee<> out all the pretty girls. But this is. frivolling. What I want to protest against is the proposed time-table for the nurses, based on an eight hours' system. Surely neither Dr. Baldwin nor Miss Squire can have had any personal experience of getting up regularly for duty at half-past three a.m.,. and of its deleterious, I may say, ruinous, effect on the health of the nurses. It was tried for a time at the Wellington Hospital, but was ■ given up because it was found absolutely impracticable. The nurses could not stand it. It is all very well to tell women ts go to bed at eight p.m.—they cannot go to sleep, and they are roused up when their vitality is at its lowest point— to go on duty. If you have an eight hours shift let it begin at six a.m.; from then until two p.m.; and from two to ten p.m., when the night nurse goes on. This is the rule at Wellington, or was * few years ago. I need not _ reiterate my arguments in favour of having male nurses for the male wards, and women of an altogether lower social position as nurses. It is of no use to '> try and cut blocks with razors, you don't want ladies in a man's sick chamber. They are only a nuisance. Give me a man to nurse me, he will have some sympathy for me.—l am, etc., R. H. Bakbwell, M.l), \ Beach Road, Devonport, July 20, 1897.