Nurses’ school ’low priority’

Press, 18 April 1979, Page 15

Nurses’ school ’low priority’

Plans by the North Canterbury Hospital Board to revamp and extend the Christchurch School of Nursing have been dashed by a letter from the Health Department. The department said it would give the project a low priority rating and asked that any new training facility should be called the staff training centre. it asked the board to consider alternative sites for nurses’ training. The chairman of the board (Mr T. C. Grigg) said all alternatives had already been thoroughly explored, and that the board would make further representations to the Government and the department. The department was using “delaying tactics" by asking the board to review the matter, he said. Crowding, and poor venti-

lation and lighting, made it i necessary for the nurses’ school to be resited. The’ board had given the project high priority and had’ planned to move thei

crowded hospital pathologvi department into the old nursing school area. Mr Grigg said the Government must be pressured into 'looking at hospital building procedures because it was (ridiculous for a project to Iget the axe when it had reached sketch-plan stage. , Mrs M. McG Clark, said 'the letter made a mockery jof the work and planning 'that had gone into the new l| school: the department ;needed a "good kick in the i shins.” Mr C. F. Whitty estimated [that stops and starts in proJject construction had cost j the board an extra SIM last. I year.