State Registration and Nursing Conditions at Home

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume XIV, Issue 2, 1 April 1921, Page 66

State Registration and Nursing Conditions at Home

We watch with interest the proceedings, as reported m the nursinig journals, of the General Nursing Councils. There being three of these councils and a tremendous number of rather conflicting claims for recognition under the Registration Acts for nurses trained according to many different standards and m Institutions varying from small hospitals with a small number of beds for acute cases to large poor-law institutions with many hundreds of beds, but chiefly for chronic cases, it is certainly not an easy matter for the councils to form regulations which will with justice fit all cases. Affiliation will certainly be the only means of enabling these hospitals to be linked together as training-schools, m order not to Avaste the valuable material for teaching purposes to be found m all. Fever hospitals being m England separate from the general hospitals, and under entirely different management, considerably complicate the difficulties. No nurse can be considered fully qualified as a medical and surgical nurse without having had experience m the nursing of infectious cases. This is more especially accentuated by the fact that enteric cases, which of all nursing* give the greatest scope to a nurse, are not nursed m general but m fever hospitals. Tt is to be hoped that the regulations will lay down some means by which nurses will be able during their course of training of three years to have experience m fever nursing. It is announced m a recent journal that the regulations under which existing nurses may be registered will be printed m pamphlet form and issued widely; also speakers are to be appointed to address meetings of nurses and explain these regulations and impress upon nurses the advisability of registering as soon as possible.

Many nurses who will be affected by these regulations are m New Zealand, and they should, m their own interests, watch for and take the earliest opportunity of being placed on the register of their own country. A matter which is giving cause for much anxiety to nurses as to the future of their profession is the Unemployment Insurance Act, under which every one not possessed of a certain income £26 per annum) must become insured. Nurses even Avho have not a regular income apart from their eai'iiings do not wish to come under this Act, which would be of little benefit to them and which would tend to class them with persons of entirely different social standing and for whom their payments would really be used. They will, probably, owing to the strong representations made, be exempted. The Hours of Labour Bill is another new legislation which might affect nurses m many very inconvenient as well as derogatory ways, and has also caused (much discussion m the Old Country m nursing circles. Some nurses consider this is likely to be their best chance of shorter hours of duty, and wish to be included; others feel that, especially m private nursing, it would be impossible for them to adhere to any system of arbitrary limitation of their service to the sick. It appears to us that under the Ministry of Health and the Registration Act. nurses will be safe m refusing to come under the Labour Bill, and that as m the matter of payment so much improvement is being achieved, so m the matter of hours of duty the day is past when women can be allowed to Avork for the long hours which were the custom m hospitals ; and m private nursing it is for the nurse herself to be true to her professional instinct and to stand by her patient when needed, and make up for longer hours by extra recreation when stress of danger is past.