Should Nurses in Training be Admitted Associate Members of the N.Z. Trained Nurses' Association

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume XVII, Issue 4, 1 October 1928, Page 185

Should Nurses in Training be Admitted Associate Members of the N.Z. Trained Nurses' Association

It has been proposed that nurses in training should be admitted as associate members of the N.Z.T.N.A., and this is desirable for various reasons, provided only those in their third year of training are admitted.

It is in her third and last year that a nurse begins to realise that her days of training are draAving to a close, and this is and important time to interest her in nursing matters outside her training school and familiarise her with the Association and its activities.

A nurse once said to me: "I shall never forget the pride of my class, some fiftee nor sixteen in number, when our Matron spoke to us in our third year, of the N.Z.T.N.A., advising us to join, and explaining its aims and the reasons why we should give it our loyal and wholehearted support, not only for a year or so, but for the whole of our lives, whether we continued nursing or not. In

order to keep our interests alive, she spoke to us repeatedly on the subject, and very kindly arranged that we should attend a course of lectures at the Club during the winter months, and proud were we that we were considered eligible to attend these lectures with the fully qualified nurses.

I remember those lectures so well, some were given by the prominent surgeons and medical men in the city and two by travelling nurses from India and the Continent." As mentioned above, it familiarises nurses in training with the Association and its activities, its aims and objects, and this is very desirable, as junior nurses scarcely know there is such an Association, and are woefully ignorant about it.

It should make them realise the importance and need of all trained nurses throughout the Dominion banding together to uphold nursing traditions and

improve conditions and for the protection of their interests. They have the privilege of attending interesting and instructive lectures, social functions, etc., and should a nurse desire a quiet place to lunch or have tea, she could then use the Club. It creates an active interest in the Nurses* Journal by the publication of subjects helpful to them in their studies, also items of interest concerning themselves and their fellow-sttidents. It would be the means of keeping the senior members in touch with the junior members, and so help them to understand each other and their many problems. It is only by the unity and strength of all branches of the nursing profession that improvement can be obtained, hence the need to interest the nurses as early as possible and before they get away out of touch with such matters. As associate members of the N.Z. T.N.A., the student nurses could, in towns where there are branches, form committees of their own, and these committees would keep in touch with the Councils by reporting matters of interest and obtaining information, etc. They would not have any voting powers, of course, but apart from this they would have all the privileges of the fully qualified nurse. The student nurse section of the Association should be open to all nurses in their third year of training, and on completion of their training, they would cease automatically to belong to that group and then be eligible to apply for full membership of the Trained Nurses' Association. Any student nurse discontinuing her training in a recognised training school before qualification would also cease to belong to the Association. A nominal fee of, say, 2/6 or 5/- should be paid by the student nurse, and this could be deducted from the entrance fee of 10/6, when application is made for membership of the Association within three months of her name being placed on the State Register,

Dr. D. Macintyre, Medical Superintendent of the Plaistow Hospital, London, said in a recent lecture to nurses "Nursing Times"). "It is the duty of the trained nurses themselves to raise the profession out of the depressed state into which it has fallen to-day, and they possess a stronglever for this purpose in the fact that the health of the community depends to a large extent on the efficiency of its nursing service and its importance in this respect is not, I think, sufficiently realised by the public. Improvement can only be obtained by the nurses organising themselves into a strong representative body, which will obtain for their profession the recognition which is its due. The one bright feature of the problem is that nursing still remains the most important calling that women can take up, and in addition it is one of absorbing interest. Student Nurses' Associations have now been formed in several countries, including England and America, and from a report on a most enthusiastic and wellattended meeting in London, under the College of Nursing, the following figures were given : 4,943 nurses in training had joined the Association, and 127 had become members of the College on completion of training. Six units had journals of their own, eleven units had contributed to the Endowment Fund of the College since the foundation of the Association, and five to the funds to help old nurses. The activities reported included exhibitions of drawings and paintings, lectures on travel, nursing and other subjects, dances, tennis, swimming, needlework, visits to Glaxo, Oxo, Coleman, Lysol, and to hospitals, a talk on Toe H, camps, American tournaments, dramatic clubs, classes, concerts, tableaux, collections for the Chapel funds, diagrams and models, a chase model, wireless sets, games equipment. Christmas funds and comforts for patients and nurses. One unit provided anatomical diagrams for a British hospital in Hankow.