CORRESPONDENCE. MATERNITY TRAINING.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 17 December 1927, Page 5

CORRESPONDENCE.

MATERNITY TRAINING.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I note with concern that the N.R.B. has decided that the midwifery training offered in Alasterton is not comprehensive enough to justify the recognition of the Alasterton Hospital as a training school. The Board has apparently only two suggestions to make to meet the expected shortage of staff in the maternity wards —firstly, bluff, i.e., to threaten fo close the wards, which does not require discussion; secondly, to fully staff the maternity wards with midwives, calling on the local bodies to make good out of the rates the added expense. Into- alia, the contributing bodies having no voice in this expenditure. A's a practical woman who has studied social conditions in many countries, 1 venture to state that there is a. third suggestion to be made. Let the Board insist that two months of every probationers’ training be spent in the maternity wards, on night and day duty. I have met cases where nurses calling themselves fully hospital-trained were absolutely at sea when called upon to nurse a maternity ease under a doctor’s or midwife’s instructions; in some cases where the medical man has a sublime but perhaps ridiculous faith in the uniform, with disastrous results. This via media would enable the maternity wards to function with economy and round off the training of the general probationers with a knowledge which will add to their value to the community, and also to their value, as mothers when they in turn marry. — I nm, etc., ANNE FLETCHER. 50 Cornwall Street.