NURSES' PAY SIR,—In the recent controversy on nurses' pay, in-
sufficient emphasis has been placed .upon the train- ing system which these unfortunate vocation-slaves are subject to.
A near acquaintance of mine qualified as a SRN at one of the more famous London hospitals a year ago. At the age of nineteen, during her training, she was regularly left in charge of a male medical ward at night. The twenty-seven or so patients ranged from mentally deficient down-and-outs who spat on her and attempted to urinate on her to younger men who were not too ill to assault her with violence in a somewhat different way. Occa- sional chores included mopping up bedfuls of blood and diarrhea. Other girls, at the age of eighteen, in the first year of their training, were customarily left in sole charge of maternity wards. Hospital meals were of prison standard, though from the same kitchens came delicacies which the nurses served up to their patients.
What seems wrong about all this is that, after deductions for food and lodgings, trainees' pay packets contain a sum averaging (within a few shillings either way) £2 10s. a week.
All nurses do at least three years' training before qualifying for the staff nurses' miserable rates of pay. This provides hospital authorities with a quite incomparable system of exploitation, the victims of which make up half to two-thirds of the nursing staff of almost all hospitals.
P. WINSTANLEY
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