NURSING IN FINLAND

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21624, 9 April 1940, Page 10

NURSING IN FINLAND

NEW ZEALAND DOCTORS EXPERIENCES An interesting account of nursing in Finland is given by Dr L. C. McNickle in the “New Zealand Nursing Journal.” The Finnish hospitals, says the writer, are of an amazingly high standard and the Finnish nurses are described in other countries as “the best in the world.” The training is done in schools under State supervision, with separate budgets. The training period is three years, of which the last six months is specialised. Particular attention is given to psychology, as the successful nurse must know the human being. After 2£ years’ general training, the final six. months is spent in specialising in some branch of nursing, such as ward nursing or operating theatre (advanced), or public health, or Xrays, or laboratory. There is an examination in each of the above-men-tioned subjects. It was explained to Dr McNickle that Finland is a young and progressive country which is not tied to tradition. They were not allowed to progress while Russia ruled them. Public health matters were particularly backward. Since they became free in 1918 they had learned what they could from other countries, but they have developed in their own way. The British people believe that four years’ practical work in a hospital is the absolute minimum—that is, an apprentice system. The Finnish training is more intense, more like a university training. In three years they not only educate the nurse very thoroughly, to such an extent that she knows phychology, something of mental diseases and obstetrics, a good deal of chemistry and pathology, and so much of anaesthetics that almost all anaesthetics in Finland are given by nurses, but they are also able to specialise in one subject. For example, in her final six months the nurse who is to become a public health nurse learns more of the social side of medicine, more about epidemic diseases and more dispensing. In recognition of the fact that the training is like a university training, they hope to abolish the small salary of 50 marks a month (£1 sterling equals 220 marks) which nurses receive during the final one and a-half years of their training. All education is free in Finlandeven university education for the highest degrees or professions—so the

nurses education will naturally be free also, apart from the £lO they pay for their board and lodgings during the preliminary school, but they think it is absurd—a survival from old times—that a nurse should be paid w T hile she is being educated! Yet only one out of every four or five who apply is accepted for training. At one school visited 24 applicants had been accepted out of 180. There were many tears and protests from the rejected ones. Thirty or 40 per cent of the trainees have matriculation, but the Scandinavian matriculation is of a higher standard than our own. Indeed, in one elementary school the doctor visited, for children up to 14, there were 40 typewriters in one classroom; other classes included chemistry, electricity, cabinetmaking to quite an advanced standard, laundry work, cooking and housekeeping. Post-graduate courses of three months are held at intervals for tutor sisters and senior staff of outlying hospitals. The practical nursing is of just as high a standard as the theoretical training. After visiting several beautiful new hospitals. Mr McNickle visited the children’s department of an old hospital, which dates from last century, and had never seen a higher standard of nursing anywhere.