THE NURSING CRISIS
Sta,—I have been much interested in the correspondence evoked by my article in your issue of March 14th. On the whole, your correspondents are in agreement with me, but Miss Hilda M. Gration, who is herself a sister-tutor, objects th my stricture on the "academic jargon" which some nursing students have to learn in the preliminary training schools. Miss Gration sets out the syllabus of instruction in these schools, about which I have no complaint, and continues, "Surely it is quite obvious that these subjects, properly taught, are most intimately connected with nursing the sick and with much of the work in the health services that many nurses undertake after training." With this I also agree, my main objection being that so many nurses are not "properly taught," but rather that an attempt is made to pack their minds with a lot of half-digested facts which have no relation to nursing. Not a few potential nurses find that they cannot remember what they do not understand, and, supposing that such knowledge is essential for becoming an efficient nurse, are put off by it and give up their career.
Miss Oration also regards as impracticable my suggestion that the student nurse should spend "a limited time each day in the wards, with opportunities for lectures, classes, and so on." But what can possibly be wrong with this? If the nurse has an hour a day for lectures and classes --arranged to suit her convenience and not that of her teachers only— another hour for quiet study, six..hours are left to be spent with patients in the wards, and this is only two hours less daily than any trained nurse spends if a 96-hour fortnight is worked. No patient can expect to have the same nurse all the time, and the student nurse, whose responsibility must be limited, is the one on whose services the patient is least dependent. Moreover, we have been repeatedly told by those who have had experience of part-time nursing that the necessarily frequent change a personnel is well received, at any rate by the chronic sick. With Miss Gration's "constructive points" I have no quarrel.—Yours faithfully,
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