KARITANE NURSE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 180, 1 July 1937, Page 12

KARITANE NURSE.

WOKK IN INDTA. For two years Miss Denise Monteath, Kairtanc nurse and daughter of Mr J. Monteath, of Fendalton, Christchurch, has not seen the inside of a kitchen. She has not been in New Zealand, however, for the last six years and a half. This long period she has spent in England and India, following her profession as a Karitane nurse. Karitane nurses in India, she said, did little manual work, but the cares of bringing up a baby in such a climate more than compensated for the absence of actual toil. A baby had to be artificially fed on some dried milk preparation; it was taken up to the hills for the heat, somewhere else for the rains, and each change was liable to upset it. With good European doctors few and and far between, the Karitane nurse of necessity shouldered much responsibility. What though a bearer accompanied her to wheel the perambulator when her charge took the air, and washing and cleaning were done by native servants, Indian conditions made the job of Karitane nursing there no sinecure.

Karitane nurses, she considers, have good opportunities for getting positions in England, particularly during the summer, when parents have their children home for the holidays, or when their own nurse is away on holiday. New Zealand Karitane training was recognised everywhere at Home, and mothercraft training in England followed exactly the same lines. She, herself, bad done two refresher courses at Cromwell House, the English mothercraft centre.