THE NURSING PROFESSION

Otago Witness, Issue 4066, 16 February 1932, Page 74

THE NURSING PROFESSION

SURPLUS OF TRAINING SCHOOLS FEWER CALLS FOR SERVICE. WELLINGTON, February 11. A suggestion that an institution acting as a training school should retain the fourth year nurses for a longer period, and supplement the ranks of nurses in training by a smaller number than others: wise would be the case, was made to-day by Dr M. H. Watt, director-general of health, when presenting certificates to nurses at the Wellington Public Hospital. “ Unfortunately, the nursing profession is not exempt from the economic ills which have beset the rest of the community,” Dr Watt said. “At the present time there is. I think, a surplus of nurses. This is due to two causes. One is that in the past we have trained too many nurses, and the other is that at the present time there is less illness among the community, with the result that there are fewer calls for the services of the trained nurse. It is a strange that in these times of distress and poverty and want of food the amount of sickness seems definitely to be less than it was in more prosperous times.” Last week Dr Watt said he had read the report of a conference of the Amerit can Hospital Association, at which one and all of the delegates had stated that in their experience their hospitals had fewer patients during the present bad times than they had when days were brighter. “We, as a department, have noticed the same thing in New Zealand,” he said. “On a recent tour one of our officers found that in practically all the hospitals he visited there were fewer patients than at any time in our experience. The department, the nurses, and the Medical Registration Board are very perturbed at this state of affairs, and have taken whatever action they could to meet the situation.” One measure adopted, Dr Watt said, was the elimination of smaller training schools. He thought it had been established that there were too many training schools in New Zealand. Some of tlie institutions were too small to give the all-round type of instruction which the present-day nurse should have. In the last 12 months or so, no fewer than nine institutions had ceased to train nurses.