Orthopædics and Massage Training for Trained Nurses

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume XI, Issue 2, 1 April 1918, Page 59

Orthopædics and Massage Training for Trained Nurses

It is recognised more and more what a tremendous part the treatment of the Wounded by massage electric treatment, Swedish exercises, etc., Will play as time goes on. With the great maj ority of Wounds, especially bone and nerve injuries, this treatment is essential. The Well qualified masseuse Will now find her opportunity, and this branch of medical nursing treatment, which for many years has been held m disrepute, owing as much to its abuse for evil purposes as to the lack of a proper standard of training and qualification, Will now take its place side by side With the trained nursing of serious medical cases. Nurses have usually combined some knowledge of massage and electrical treatment with their general nursing knowledge, but this smattering of so important a branch of treatment Will no longer be sufficient. Masseurs and masseuses who are trained for that Work alone require doubtless much useful knowledge, and WitTi practice after the short term of eighteen months or two

years training, are fully competent to carry out the treatment under medical supervision. For Work m military hospitals the lack of the training m discipline and m the dealing With all classes of patients rather handicaps many masseuses. Some seem to fancy that as during their course of study they have not been under the same discipline as nurses, they are a more independent class of professional Workers, some even that their status is higher. This, of course, is far from the case. They are not called upon to deal with the issues of life and death as the nurse is, and that dealing With life and death and the responsibility so involved must elevate the profession of the nurse into the highest for a Woman. Higher even, from one point of view, than that of the Woman doctor, high as that is, for she does not, m the course of her duty (though she often does so, nevertheless) Watch by and soothe the last hours of the dying.

Nurses must not neglect this very valuable part of the treatment of the "Wounded, and the nerve-racked. They must add to their medical and surgical and midwifery nursing the art of massage and its attendant treatments. It is now intended to send on hospital ship staffs a very large proportion of nursing sisters with the massage qualification. Unfortunately, so far there is but one hospital m the Dominion which m the fourth year gives to its graduate nurses a full course of massage training. This Will give to the graduate of that school a considerable advantage m being accepted for service. We hope that henceforward the larger schools of the Dominion Will so arrange that their nurses may not be left at a disadvantage and- that a number of

nurses each year Will add the massage qualification to their general certificate, and thus be able to undertake any treatment ordered for their patients. It is hoped during this year to have the Bill for the Registration of Masseurs (including masseuses) passed by Parliament. In it is a provision for trained nurses to take thi s course m twelve months instead of the eighteen necessary for untrained men and Worn en . We strongly advise our young nurses to employ the year after qualification as nurses, until after Which they are not eligible for the Army Nursing Service, m obtaining a twelve-months' course of massage training at a recognised school.