State Examinations

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume XVII, Issue 4, 1 October 1928, Page 190

State Examinations

In further reference to the examination in medical and surgical nursing, held on June 6th and 7th, the results of which were not received in time for publication in the July issue, it is now reported that of the 175 candidates, 143 passed, while eleven who passed in one or more subjects at the previous examination, completed a pass on this occasion, and seventeen achieved a partial pass. The fact that four only completely failed, and 54 passed with honours, is satisfactory. Nurses Dorothea Grove and Frances Rutherford, both of New Plymouth Hospital, came first for New Zealand. The comments of the examiners for the written papers are both interesting and helpful to the teachers and future candidates. The questions were published in the July number. Following are the examiner's comments on the surgical paper sent to the Director of Nursing:- — The papers on the whole were very good, some exceptionally good, and I confess that if those questions had been sprung on the examiner without any special preparation he could not have answered them so methodically and completely as some of the best of them. In going through so large a number of papers, one cannot help observing that, apart from the different practices taught in different hospitals, the standard of training also varies exceedingly in different schools. Without information as to where the papers come from, the examiner soon discovers that the papers are in groups, and he jumps from one series of good, well set-up papers to another, where they are indifferent or sometimes poor, and one feels both from the methods of treatment and the style of the papers that either there is not so much expected of the nurses in those hospitals, or that the training is not so good. One sometimes feels sorry that some do not seem to have anything like the same opportunities for good training that others have. Also, one finds that there is a big discrepancy in the standard of general education — spelling, composition,

method, etc., required by different training schools. I am more and more convinced that if the supply of probationers is sufficient, it is a mistake to accept girls for training who have not had a good school education. However willing and kind she may be, the ill-educated nurse can never be a first-class nurse. A good many marks were lost in the anatomy questions though they were very elementary, and some excellent "howlers" were forthcoming, e.g., "the contents then pass from the jejunum to the ilium, from the ilium to the ischium." "Food is masticated by the parotid glands." "The femoral artery is a branch of the coeliac axis." "The external iliae then passes through the foramen magnum." In the breast operation, there is often far too much dressing of the wound with the insertion of wicks of gauze, etc. It makes one wonder how many breast wounds in our hospitals are septic. The "definitions" were found easy and were well answered. The question on intestinal obstruction was well answered — the great majority showing themselves quite competent to recognise such a case when it turns up. "Mastoid abscess" was not done quite so well. I was surprised to find how well the nursing management of "gastrostomy" was known, as the actual nursing experience of such cases can not be very great. A few, unfortunately, mistook "gastrostomy" for "gastro-enterostomy," but when well answered, some marks were allowed. The spelling is surprisingly inaccurate, and though it was not a dictation exercise, one is astonished to find how often there is confusion between "bowels" and "bowls," and not more than ten per cent. can spell "intussusception." One unconscious humorist wrote about cleaning up the skin, "paying* special attention to the skin-crevasses." One wonders if she has been to Franz Josef Glacier lately. On the whole I can congratulate you on the high standard of training in your

hospital schools as evidenced by the papers corrected. The above comments show less satisfaction than those on the surgical paper, and this result has previously been reported on many occasions, showing that less interest appears to be taken in medical nursing, although in the case of such cases the ability and careful training of the nurse counts even more than in surgical nursing.