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Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume XVII, Issue 4, 1 October 1924, Page 142

At the recent Conference of Hospital Boards, among the many matters discussed was the establishment of private wards. No definite decision was made, each Board being left to make any arrangements it may consider necessary for its own district. Should such wards be established, the interests of trained nurses must be safeguarded, as will be those of the medical practitioners, who will not attend private patients m an honorary capacity as they attend patients m the public wards. Such patients should also be nursed by qualified nurses, preferably by those engaged m private nursing, and at private fee rates. This, we understand, is the manner m which patients m the private wards attached to American and Canadian hospitals are cared for. Many of our nurses travelling

m America have taken duty m such wards.

Another matter discussed at the Conference was that of superannuation and pension for hospital employees. In this scheme nurses, of course, are included; but the scheme does not, as at present drafted, meet the needs of the nursing profession, so many members of which are, after qualification, no longer hospital employees but engaged m the precarious and uncertain work of private nursing. It is for such nurses, whose employment depends on the ill health of the community, and who, as preventive medicine still further progresses, will still more frequently than at present be unable to obtain work sufficient to provide for the future.