"THE BEST OF ALL ADVENTURES"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 424, 8 August 1947, Page 14

"THE BEST OF ALL ADVENTURES"

HEN the shortage of nurses first began to be acute two or three years ago the staff of the Hokianga Co-operative Medical Service prepared a broadcast appeal which for technical reasons was not at the time used. The situation has now become really critical, and we print the appeal. DOCTOR SPEAKS: Nurses are urgently required. Student nurses must be enrolled if our Social Services are to be maintained. To woo and win them some basic misunderstandings must be settled in principle and provisional terms agreed on. For example. Society must realise that the belief that "Virtue is its own reward," as a philosophical concept peculiarly suitable for procuring cheap nurses, is true no longer. Modern nurses won’t accept payment for work in a spurious coinage cast from a mint of fine words excreting. fatuous flattery and hints of transcendental pre-ference-having no exchange value. Such counterfeit is conducive to swollen head and a halo-an empty purse with a tear and excellent prospects of a hard old age. So it is imperative that nurses who have undergone a six years’ training should be as well paid» as other professional classes-and New Zealand, to her eternal credit, has gone further in the right direction than most countries, though not nearly far enough nor fast enough. She realised sooner than most that the worms had turned at last, and one good turn deserves another. Nurses are not greedy. They do not say that they are "misunderstood" and that being unhappily in love with gold (not God) they needs must have more of it than others. Nurses say they need only as much as others get and are willing to work for it in the way that suits society. It is difficult to see how their claim can be denied much longer; and we must have women nurses, That) men could nurse "is ridiculous and physiologically

impossible. On the other hand, nurses in training must realise that they are still in their nursery, and here our civilisation’s age-long social distinction of rulers and ruled and the reign of law must pertain. But it must be a sunny nursery with free cross ventilation of ideas, and grievances-and adjustment not power the supreme and abiding law. The alternative is barbarism. When nurses have learnt all the rules and tricks of trade, they escape the nursery-being now qualified for full citizenship adorned with’ special privileges-free to seek adventure wherever they list, always provided they abide by the rules of their own guild. A NURSE SPEAKS: I am a District Nurse. I have a house of my own,,a very nice house, well-furnished with "all ancient and modern conveniences and always a spare room for friends. I have. a housekeeper-a car-a garden, animals, — and I like pigs, I have all the profes- \ sional tools I need. I am hard worked but not too hard. I get a good deal of leisure. I enjoy .privilege through sympathy and status — privilege granted by the people with whom and for whom I work -given voluntarily-the only privilege really worth much. For example, they make room for me and change my punctured tyre. I feel important and I am. For I have great responsibilities, but only those I have been trained for. A DOCTOR SPEAKS AGAIN: Anda nurse’s life now holds brighter hopes of high adventure-the only good life-than any other profession or trade open to women. So I appeal to all girls of high spirit who seek adventure, and to their parents, to advise them to join in the best of all adventures. We are not interested in girls of congenital low spirits-so often full of uncttous humility to those above them and devils. to those beneath them; of mushy softness and a genius, sometimes real, sometimes assumed, for self-sacri-fice; the historic nurse of popular de-, lusion, whom all nurses hate, I see no place for such in our philosophy. Fortunately they are rare in New Zealand. ~