Nursing Journals from Abroad

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume II, Issue 2, 1 April 1909, Page 60

Nursing Journals from Abroad

There has been so much of interest in many of the recent nursing publications that we have been tempted to make large excerpts and reprints of whole articles ; but our space has forbidden this indulgence, and we can only advise nurses to read as many of the different journals as they can. It will now be possible, when so many nurses clubs and residential homes are being started, for members to see these papers regularly. In a recent Nursing Times there is a very good article on the establishment and equipment of a nursing home ; different sections of the article are written by members of the medical profession, and by trained nurses who have had experience in this class of work. The requirements as regards staffing are quite out of the question in this country, it would not be possible here to carry on an establishment as described, where the fees expected from patients reach so high as twelve guineas, and the salaries given to trained nurse are as low as £36 or £30 per annum. The exact reverse is the case— Patients rarely pay more than three, four, or in a few cases, five guineas, and the salaries paid to trained nurses are from £52 to £100 a year. It is therefore necessary to limit the number of trained nurses, and to employ a certain number of probationers, who will receive £25 per annum and upwards, lor any but special nursing duties. Then the problem of whether or no training can be given in a private hospital is a very live question here. It is absolutely necessary if the proprietress of a private hospital is to cover expenses anel make any profit at all, to have a certain amount of untrained assistance, and in a well-equipped private hospital of about twelve beds, to which patients are sent by up-to-date surgeons and physicians, the probationers get very valuable instruction and experience in the course of a few years. The Government regulation is that there must be a registered nurse for every six patients. We would much like to receive an article from a nurse conducting a private hospital here, describing her experiences. The British ] oumal of Nursing is, as usual full of interesting matter ; not 1 least being the latest news concerning State registration. Nurses should all read this journal, as by it they are kept up to the details of nursing

progress in varied directions all over the world. We would like to copy much, but then Kai Taiki would no longer be the New Zealand Nurse's own journal. La Garde Malade Hospitaliere, in its January number, has an interesting account of a hospital in Algiers, the conditions of which take one far back. There is also translated an account of the Army Nursing Reserve in New Zealanel, which was given some time ago in the British Journal of Nursing. We regret that we have no further progress to report of this movement. The American journals are also full of interest. We have receiveel copies of the American Journal of Nursing, the John Hopkins Almanac Magazine, and the Canadian Nurse. In the March number of the latter, there is an article which we shall reprint, the conditions described being so similai to our own, and the article containing many useful hints for us : — 'NURSING IN THE BACK-BLOCKs." In connection with the little paper sent by a nurse working under a County Council in a distant country place, it may be interesting for the nurses of New Zealand to learn how the same difficult problem of providing nursing care for those far away from the large centres is exercising the minds of members of their profession in Canada. In a recent number of the Canadian Nurse, is a most interesting article dealing with this matter. A great difficulty has been propounded by the Inspector-General of Hospitals, who has on several occasions spoken to various assemblages of nurses, and appealed to them for help in carrying out his idea. It is, as you have reael in previous numbers, a system of district nursing in the back-blocks under the various Hospital Boards. Steps are already being taken to institute the system, and it is hoped during this year, to establish nurses in many parts to carry out the work. The plan described by the Russell County nurse is a little different, and inasmuch as the nurse is at more personal risk, perhaps not so good moreover the very poorest are not catered for. Do not let it come to pass that there are no volunteers for this most necessary work aud that, as recently happened, a nurse who is not fully trained, or a registered nurse

of New Zealand has, for default of one of you, been appointed County nurse. What will have to be done if this is the case will be to get nurses sent out by the Colonial Nursing Association, wir.ch supplies Nurses from the training schools in England for many of the British colonies. Here let us quote from the Canadian Nurse, and you will see how like our conditions are. " Miss Laut spoke of the dearth of nursing care for poor women in the more thinly settled parts of the West. She took the point of view (and most justly) that every child has the right to be " born well "—that is to say, that the best of nursing care should be afforded both to the mother and child at that critical time when their whole future is at stake, whether they are able to afford to pay for it or not. Miss Laut regarded this matter as of national importance, and who can assert that it is not ? She asserted boldly that these women are not given a fair chance, that they do not, and under present conditions, cannot receive anything approaching adequate care and assistance. Those of us who have worked in the gyna?cological wards of any large Western hospital need no further argument to convince us that women are not cared for as they should be from an abstretrical point of view. Nurses in small Western hospitals can also give some experiences at first-hand which are tolerably ugly. To take one instance in the w riter's personal experience : A woman, thirty years of age, English by birth, and possessing both education and refinement, was brought into the hospital (the usual type of small Western Hospital) lying on straw on a waggon box, twenty-five miles over an unspeakable trial. She had been confined three days previously. No doctor had been present. They had no neighbours within ten miles. Her husband had cared for her as best he could, had done the necessary housework, and looked after two children under seven years of age. On the second day she had attempted to rescue the youngest child who was crawling about too near the hot stove. The result was a severe haemorrhage. It is not necessary to go into further details other than to say that on the seventh day she died at the hospital, crying out with her last breath against this cruel lonely West. This object lesson left an ineffaceable impression on the writer's mind, the more so because her particular hospital refused to take obstetrical cases unless they could afford to pay. It will, of course, be said that tlie woman's husband was to some extent responsible. But, was lie ? Tiiey were living on a shack on their own homestead. They hael been out from England for a year. They were struggling against eiebt and homesickness. The crop had been a bad one. In

other words, they had the bare necessities of life and no more. They could no more afford to pay for a doctor and nurse than they could fly. And the hospital did not take free obstetric cases. There you have the matter in a nutshell. It cannot be said that cases like the above are by any means rare. Any country doctor can match it frcjm his own experience ti;ne anel time again." We know that cases such as this occur in the sparsely settled parts of New Zealand also. The writer goes on to propose schemes by which hospitals may be established to take such cases, but ' By no means all women can or will leave their homes for the hospital at this time. Here is the crux of the situation. The problem now is double. The domestic side intrudes itself here as it does in all phases of nursing. Private nurses in the West know to their cost that a case in a farmhouse of the poorer sort usually entails not only the care of the patient night and day, but the responsibility of the domestic menage as well. With all due deference to our literary critics, this is too heavy a load for the average woman to bear. We bear no malice either to Mrs. Cran or Miss Laut, but we must express an earnest desire to see them attempt tliis dual role in their own proper persons for the short space of one week. At the end of that time we feel sure that these ladies would acknowledge the fact that no one human being can conduct a maternity case with one hand, as it were, and get the children ready for school and put out the washing with the other. It is not a matter of a nurse being above housework. Tasks fall to the lot of every nurse beside which the most menial domestic drudgery might be deemeel aesthetic. This is simply a matter of physical incapacity. It seems to the writer that this question of nursing these women in their homes will be met in the long run by an extension of the sphere of the Victorian Order of Nurses ( District or Visiting Nurses). The domestic side of the question should not be shouldered upon the nursing profession entirely. They have sufficient responsibility already. The scope of the smaller hospital must be increased, and the work of the Victorian Order, or some other order along its lines, must be greatly extended. Tliis means volunteers, and it means money. Both surely will be forthcoming. Whatever scheme is adopted will require considerable outlay at the beginning, but in time, if properly conducted, the enterprise might be partly self-supporting. Pioneer work is beset at best — hard enough for the men, and cruelly, sometimes unbearably, hard for the women. Still hard as it may be, there are now, and will be for many years to come, women who having set their hands to the plough in this last work, will not turn them away until the

furrow be completed. New country is opened up every year. One task only grows the more difficult for being put off. One's critics notwithstanding, we have done much. The Victorian Order has done much. All honour to them both. Most of all, the private nurses deserve every praise. Many of them take their cases as they come, and go as cheerfully to a desolate farmhouse as to a rich Winnipeg home. But it is not fair to thrust the burden on individuals. We should take counsel together, East and West, and find out how best we can answer, and quickly,

the exceeding bitter cry of our pioneer sisters of the West for help nnd ?uccour." How true all this is, how applicable to our new country here, and to the work our nurses have to do for those who are struggling to make a living away in the back-blocks— in the roadless North. When called for to assist with the institution of the back-blocks district nursing system, let us hope many volunteers may come forward and may leave the towns, where, though they are needed, the need is not so urgent.