SHORTAGE OF NURSES

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2468, 22 May 1915, Page 11

SHORTAGE OF NURSES

It is a sign of the times, states a writer in an English paper, that they new military hospital opened recently at Mount Vernon, Hampstead (England) has on its staff several voluntary aid workers, women without or with very little hospital training, who hold St. John Ambulance or Red Cross certificates. and who will work under the direction of trained Army nurses. This is the' first timo that tliey have been taken on the staff of a London military hospital. The shortago of fully trained nurses is making itself felt in all directions. One large trained nurses' co-operative society in London reports that it has to refuse twenty applications a day for nurses to do private work. Early in the war arrangements were made by an English committee to place 300 nurses with three years' training in French hospitals. Nearly 150 have already gone, but I hear that the difficulty of securing others increases with each week, and this in spite of the fact that many English voluntary hospitals in France are being closed. A new hospital of 1000 beds to be opened in. Edinburgh by the R.A.M.C. will absorb all the available nurses in Scotland. The main question, indeed, for the authorities to decide is how large a proportion of voluntary aid nurses can be usefuly employed under the direction of the trained army and how the readjustment shall be made.