NURSING SHORTAGE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 254, 26 October 1937, Page 2

NURSING SHORTAGE

WORLD-WIDE CONDITIONS CRITICISM OF TRAINING Miss M. I. Lambie, director of the nursing division of the New Zealand Health Department, returned by the Rangitiki last Thursday from a visit abroad, where she travelled under a Rockefeller Scholarship. In an interview she made reference to the shortage of trained nurses, and said thv practically all over the world there is a shortage of recentlyqualified nurses waiting to fill positions as staff nurses in public or private hospitals. Some of the reasons for this was the great expansion of hospital bed capacity through building programmes requiring additional staff. Also the proportion of registered nurses to student nurses had increased materially because of new treatments and the need for more supervision of student nurses. Many new positions in public health and industrial nursing had developed, and there had been an increase in private nursing. Miss Lambie said there had been a great deal of criticism in Great Britain of the present system of training nurses, as it had been found that the average nurse taking up this work had little or no knowledge of preventive or social nursing. This difficulty had arisen because tne education of nurses had been governed largely by the stalling demands of hospitals rather than by the available clinical and theoretical experience. “Although some steps have already been taken in New Zealand by the Nurses and Midwives’ Registration Board to widen the scope of training and every nurse, before qualifying, must have had experience in nursing children and infectious diseases, there are still improvements which can be made if only hospital boards will realise that they are responsible for an educational programme, and that the training school does not exist just to staff the hospital inexpensively,” said Miss Lambie.

WOMEN POLICE

SUCCESS IN POLAND ADJUSTING OF LAWS Polish policewomen started their activities 12 years ago. Comparing past and present conditions, v,e at once realise how creative and pioneering was their work, says a correspondent. Formerly there was full equality between men and women in the Polish police force. The policewomen were incorporated in the ranks of the State police; they had the same rights and the same duties as men—their colleagues. But in reality those first years were full of difficulties. Society was rather sceptic as to the capacity of women to deal with crime, as to their physical and moral endurance. One of the greatest achievements of the women police was the confidence they succeeded to win with the victims of the white slave traffic. Slowly but surely the conviction spread that a national campaign against traffic in women was impossible without women police. As time went by difficulties, which at the beginning were hampering the policewomen's activities, were removed. Laws were adjusted and changed, and here the experience of the women police was taken into account. Thanks to the policewomen, institutions of an educational and restoring character were founded, which were a necesary complement of the preventive and rehabilitating work of the women police.