Male Nurses Urged To Strive For Goals

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31057, 12 May 1966, Page 6

Male Nurses Urged To Strive For Goals

It was essential that the male nursing profession strove for a goal which it set a little higher from year to year and which remained just out of reach. Dr. L. McH. Berry, medical superintendent of the North Canterbury Hospital Board, told delegates at the official opening of the nineteenth annual conference of the Society of Registered Male Nurses of New Zealand. “You are going to have to work and push for your goal. The sky’s the limit, and I am sure that you will reach it,” he said.

Dr. L. C. L. Averill, chairman of the North Canterbury Hospital Board, said that the society had reached maturity after an adolescence of 19 years.

Male nursing was something in which the North Canterbury Hospital Board was very interested, and it was very proud of what its trainees had done. The 21 male nurses who were either in training or had graduated in hospitals in the board’s area were doing extremely good work, and some were in charge of wards. Male nursing was taking an increasingly important role and was of great value. Male nurses would probably have increasing responsibility in the emergency and accident department of the Christchurch Hospital, he said.

“New Zealand has been a little slow in making full use of male nurses, but we are getting going now,” he said. The Mayor (Mr G. Manning), who officially opened the conference, complimented the delegates on taking up nursing.

“You are doing some marvellous work, and I only hope that more and more will come into the profession,” he said.

Society was very fortunate in that during the last two or three centuries there had been women willing to devote their lives to saving the suffering, and now men were doing the same thing, Mr Manning said. About 26 delegates from all parts of New Zealand are attending the conference, which will end today.