MENTAL NURSING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 20, 4 September 1946, Page 8

MENTAL NURSING

REHABILITATION REGULATIONS Ex-service personnel who before their service with the armed forces were engaged in nursing duties in mental hospitals are affected by recently gazetted regulations entitled the Rehabilitation (Psychiatric Nurses) Regulations, 1946. In an explanatory statement, the Rehabilitation Department says that when provision was made for the registration of psychiatric nurses under the Nurses and Midwive’s Act, 1945, it was provided that any adequately trained person who, before January 1, 1945, had passed the examination prescribed and conducted by the Mental Hospitals Department and known as the Senior Examination for Mental Nurses, could be registered. This provision was made to admit to registration those persons who had already undergone training and had passed the examination referred to, as the new legislation also made provision for State examinations and registration in the same way as for general nurses. However, the position of ex-ser-vicemen who were engaged in nursing duties in mental hospitals before becoming members of the armed forces, was brought under notice, and it was decided by the Nurses and Midwives’ Board that it was only fair that they should be afforded similar opportunity to qualify for registration, since they had been unable, on account of their war service, to sit the examination or complete the course of training. It was thus decided that discretionary power should bo granted to the Board to register for a limited period those ex-servicemen who pass the senior examination for mental nurses before the end of 1947, and the new regulations make provision accordingly.