CIVIL NURSING RESERVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1943, Page 2

CIVIL NURSING RESERVE

STRENGTH TO BE INCREASED. URGENT NEED FOR MORE VOLUNTARY AIDS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The urgent need for more voluntary aids in the Civil Nursing Reserve was stressed by the Minister of Health, Mr Nordmeyer, in an interview last evening. He said that early next year new. hospitals were to be opened in Auckland and Wellington to provide addii tional beds for military patients. It had therefore been decided to increase the strength of the Civil Nursing Reserve by the appointment of at leant 200 more voluntary aids. The National Service Department, said the Minister, had undertaken to recommend manpower officers to release girls who were already in other positions, but in order to enable the Health Department to obtain the number of girls required it might be necessary to accept girls who held their home nursing and first aid certificates, but who had not taken their hygiene or undergone their 60 hours’ training. If this were found necessary, arrangements could be made for these girls to be given their 60 hours' training and hygiene lectures at the hospital to which they were assigned, by their undergoing a fortnight’s preliminary course before beginning duty in the wards. All applications for enrolment in the Civil Nursing Reserve must be made to the commandants of the local branches of the Red Cross Society or the Order of St. John.