THE FRENCH HOSPITALS

New Zealand Tablet, 2 September 1909, Page 9

THE FRENCH HOSPITALS

AFTER THE EXPULSION OF THE RELIGIOUS

It is a good many years now since the French Government, yielding to the clamor of the anti-clerical politicians (who have never ' jobs ' enough to go the rounds of their friends) began what is called in " Paris ' the laici-" zation of the hospitals ' — that is to say, the driving out of the religious nurses who worked . without pay, and the putting in their places paid -lay nurses' (writes Mr. Alvan F. Sanborn in the Boston Traveler). So long as" this change was made gradually, it worked little visible harm except to-the pockets of the taxpayers. But the passage of the law against the congregations of 1901, and of the law of separation of 1905, emboldened the party in power to hasten the operation ; and this haste has produced deplorable, not to say revolting, results. "When the Government expels Sisters from the hospitals, it puts trained nurses, in their places theoretically. As a matter of fact, it has only a handful of properly trained nurses at its disposal. The greater part of the new nurses are the veriest riff-raff, careless, and inefficient. The following extract from a personal letter which I received a short time ago from a thoroughly-trained lay nurse who has been put in charge of a 'laicized ' hospital in the West of France gives a better idea of what "is actually taking place in the hospitals, of the provinces than columns of statistics or of learned observations could give: The hospital' of which I have charge has its service assured by lay nurses* who are given the name of ' guards.' "- Surely they deserve no other name ; that of nurses in no way belongs to them. The precipitation of the attempt to ' laicize ' the hospital obliged the administration to accept such women, as were willing to serve, without selecting them, for, in this Breton country, the respectable women would not be willing to supplant the .Sisters. And so, among these recruits, I have found women of all sorts. of morality, and, for the greater part, no morality at all. Besides, they are almost totally lacking in education. . I have been obliged to give up eating at the same table with them. Their manners, their low talk, and their conduct annoy me the more that they are for the most part older than I, and that they consider me impertinent if I call them to order. It is a most painful situation, I assure you. In these .wards, these, 'guards' are far from giving' the patients the care they have a right to expect. This, however, is not their fault. The authorities, in their impatience to replace the Sisters, tried to form nurses by giving ignorant women a few theoretical lessons and letting them practise in certain wards without any superintendence. They fancied that their recruits would learn practical nursing by associating with the ward servants. At the end of four months of theoretical courses, and of two years of this sort of unsupervised practice, they were given diplomas. It is with a force formed in this haphazard fashion that I am obliged to carry on a hospital of 350 beds, of which 320 are occupied. Every day I see dressings, and especially bandages, such as nobody ever dreamed of, and which are aseptic only in name. When I make it my business, to , point out their defects, I always find these ' guards ' ready with their. retorts, but never well-disposed. And wheir, in order to show them the right way I take hold and do the dressing myself, I am rewarded by the disappearance of those who need so sadly to learn. I have never been able to persuade the ' guards ' to come together to learn

what it is in my power to teach them, and I have often heard them say : 'If they have given us diplomas, it is because we deserve them.' I will add no reflections. But you will readily understand what I have to endure from this state of things when I tell you that I have to assume the - entire- night service • without either a physician or 'an interne in the establishment. The physicians are called only for urgent operations, and only then do the ' guards ' come to my help. One night, not a single ' guard ' being willing to get up, I found myself obliged to call the ward servants' to help me to produce artificial respiration in a drowned person. The next day, when these ' ladies ' learned that we had worked four hours and a half, they congratulated' themselves on having stayed in their beds. < _ - From the lay head nurse of a 'laicized' hospjfcal in the East of France, which has attempted to establish a training school for nurses, I have a similar letter, from which "I quote a few words only: 'The recently ; laicized" hospital of J is still groping; and its school is not yet organised as it should be, because of the difficulty of recruiting a teaching force offering the guarantee of conscientiousness and of education indispensable in those who are to. train hospital nurses. The difficulty arises, I bejiey,e, from the unsavory reputations of the lay/nurses throughout France. And so I might *go on citing one provincial hospital after another whose services have been demoralised "by ' laicization.' ' Maiiy establishments,' says Dr. Morman, of the National Health" Department " (a fervent believer in laicization, by the way), 'have already disappeared for want of funds and a capable force. When we try to " laicize ' a big establishment, we have all the trouble in the world. It is not enough to decree " laicization '-' ; it is necessary to prepare it.' The situation in Paris, particularly on the moral side, is worse if anything than in the provinces. A few months ago Mile. Bertha B , a young woman who was a" nurse in the Hospital La Charite, .was arrested for throwing a bowl of vitriol at her paramour. In "the course of her trial, the fact was brought out that she had been an inmate of an insane asylum before being entrusted with the care of the city's sicl?. Mistakes will happen, of course, in any great charitable enterprise, -but this is a fair example of the carelessness with which the lay nurses are recruited. ' At the military hospitals of Val de-Grace, the nurses, who are soldiers, are currently accused of horrible practices akin to those which caused recent scandals in Germany; and these accusations are taken seriously by professional philanthropists who are not in the habit of paying attention to sensational rumors. " In 25 years, probably, in 10 years, possibly (if the Government makes great exertion in training nurses), the nursing service in the public hospitals" of France will become as good as it was before it was meddled with and disorganised by the greed and intolerance of the anti-clerical politicians. But ' laicization ' (supposing it desirable) might have been brought about in good time by the exercise of patience and perseverance without any such atrocious consequences. In trying to 'laicize' the hospitals of the country at one fell swoop, the State has done untold harm to the destitute sick. And it has at present neither the money nor the trained workers to repair the damage.