A Charter for Nurses This autumn the Trades Union Congress
will discuss the conditions of the nursing profession, and the Daily Herald of last Monday gave interesting advance details of the proposed Nurses' Charter. It will recommend a 93-hour fortnight, a month's holiday with pay, and provision for sickness and disability. Also there will be an attempt to abolish unnecessary restrictions, which, as a medical corre- spondent pointed out in recent articles in The Spectator, was one of the main reasons for the present serious lack of nurses. These proposals should do something to remedy the present shortage, but the most important suggestion is that there should be compulsory training for all probationer nurses before they undertake ward duty, a measure that should ensure that the title " nurse " has a definite standing. The problem of nurses " who are ambitious to become real students " is also recognised in the claim that facilities should be given for free training in midwifery, massage, dietetics, health visiting and sister tutoring. If the Congress does evolve a scheme that can be recognised as practical it will have put a useful piece of work to its credit.
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