NURSING PROFESSION

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 75, Issue 6442, 5 November 1947, Page 6

NURSING PROFESSION

TO BE INVESTIGATED BY ADVISORY COUNCIL SOME BRITISH RECOMMENDATIONS The working conditions of nurses has been the subject of some discussion at recent meetings of the Waikato Hospital Board, who have experienced difficulty common to all hospital boards throughout the Dominion, that of acquiring nursing staff in adequate numbers. An advisory council has been set up by the New Zealand Government to study all aspects of the nursing profession in the Dominion, and in connection with this the report of a working party appointed for the same purpose in England last year has aroused some discussion. Many of the conditions reviewed in the report are applicable to New Zealand, and the recommendations reveal fundamental thinking which some medical authorities consider has been neglected in this country. Student Status for Trainees The main recommendations of the working party include full student status for nurses in training; a wider but shorter training for State registration, including training in public health, followed by a year’s practice under supervision; grouping of selected hospitals and public health agencies to form composite training units; a 40-hour five-day training week with the three-shift system; separation of the finances of the training school from those of the hospital; establishment of regional nurse training boards. The working party does not consider that 18 is too young to begin nursing, but says every encouragement should be given to more mature candidates. Obstacles should not be put in the way of married persons. Pointing out that 24 per cent of hospital nurses are in the lowest grades of intelligence found in the general population, the report says that it is inconceivable that persons .differing so widely in intelligence should respond to the same training or be fitted to discharge the same functions. The proposed training scheme requires at least average ability. Misplaced Discipline Discussing the factors which cause suitable girls to leave the profession, the working party says that the most important is misplaced discipline. Others in order of importance are the attitude of the senior staff, food, hours, and pressure of work. It concludes that nurses must not be regarded as junior employees subject to an outworked system of discipline, but must be given full student status with the condition it implies. No hospital with less than 100 beds can provide the essential variety of training for nurses, says the report. By reorganising the system, it concludes, in two years it will be possible to give more comprehensive and effective training than at present and it can be achieved in a five-day 40hour week. Students below the level of ability required can be encouraged to become nursing orderlies.