The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 1916. NURSES' GRIEVANCES.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 July 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 1916. NURSES' GRIEVANCES.

.Outsiders reading the report of the meeting on Monday when the Hospital Board investigated the grievances of the nurses will agree that the nurses were thoroughly justified in petitioning the Board for tetter conditions. The wonder is that they have been so patient and long-suf-fi ring. In the matter of sleeping accommodation, it appears there are only II rooms for 33 nurses. Now, is it right to ask women with such arduous and responsible duties, working such unearthly hours, to have no room they can call their own? Let Board members try to engage a nurse or a servant and not provide a separate room, and see how they get on! No one outside of the New Plymouth hospital would tolerate it •'oi a moment. Then in regard to sitting room and study acommodation, with adequate heating and provision for baths, surely the nurses are entitled to consideration in these important respects. They could command these facilities and .'onvenienccs anywhere privately, and why should they not iu a hospital, where so much depends upon their efficiency? Without ordinary, decent comfort, how can the nurses give efficient service? In our opinion, the Board has taken up •'. wrong attitude n\er the nurses' grievances. It should have been unnecessary for the nurses to have preferred them, if the Board had done its duty by the u.irscs. It should have seen that what (hey asl:ed for—which is only fair and ..asonable—was provided long before now. Of course, the hospital has grown rapidly during the last two years, but the point is that the Board has provided for the additional' requirements in so far as the patients' accommodation is concerned, but has done nothing whatever to meet the nurses' needs. One is quite as important as the other. The Board talks about the expense it has been put •o lately, as if that has •anything to do with the nurses. They. long-snlTcring souls, eannot help the e.-.-pensc. The Heard also cries out about, the expense of providing extra nurses' accommodation and the possibility of obtaining no help from the Government. When the Hoard -el out tu build a new hospital, it made no boms aboiw calling upon the Iceal bodies to provide their share of the money, and it should not do so now over the nurses' accommodation, even if the public have to find the whole of the '.noney necessary The district was never so rich, never so able to bear such a comparatively small charge, and, it seems to us the Board, instead of haggling with the nurses, and thereby bemoaning themselves as well as the ratepayer; they represent, would have cut a better figure if they had accepted the position and set about raising the money, and not waited until the nurses, smarting under their disabilities, had to tell the Board its plain duty. Now the Board reluctantly proposes to obtain estimates for utilising the worm-eaten, disease-ridden, old hospital for the purpose, which is simply putting oil' the evil day and spending money which will be subsequently wasted. The district realises the debt it is under to the medical and nursing staffs, and it is quite prepared to do its duty by them, and never was it better able to. Then why waste money qnd time? As for nurses' remuneration, it may be, and probably is, the case that the rates at Now Plymouth are as high i.s elsewhere, but that means nothing. As a. matter o:f fact, the payments marie to this highly-skilled, self-denying pro-

lession throughout the country are a siar.dal. Jjuriny the iirst your they get nothing, or almost nothing, and in the iovrth year of service they reach the munificent sum of £4B per annum. Hire a nurse privately and the cost is i!!i a week and found. Her work is not, generally speaking, nearly so arduous as that of a hospital .nurse. It will he paid: ''Oh, b'.it look at the training they get at the hospital, and what that means in their subsequent career!" The. same argument was not so many years ago i.sed in connection with trade appentjeethip. A father of a boy wishing to learn a trade had to pay the employer a bonus. Girls learning dressmaking got nothing for their services. They were being taught trades, forsooth! These were the 'good old days," hut wise legislators rightly put a stop to it in this country years ago. Nurses are, by the same token, worthy of their hire, and they should be paid adequately. No women are more deserving, no class has a greater call on (iie public's consideration, but because i ):ey have been content to accept the miserable doles given them, preferring to Miller than to enlist public support by their own clamor, and because they have had no champions on parsimonious Hospital Boards their rate of payment has remained quite disproportionate to the value of tlieir service. The nurses deserve the most generous and kindest treatment at the hands of the public and no right-thinking ratepayer would for a moment quarrel with the Taranaki Board, for instance, if >t decided to substantially increase the salaries of the nurses—or the doctors either, for that matter, who are quite as iniwrablv r«niuneraied—or set about providing them with the accommodation to which they are so obviously entitled, but, on the contrary, he would acclaim the Board 'or its just action.