APPEAL FOR NURSES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 429, 12 September 1947, Page 5

APPEAL FOR NURSES

Sir,-I read in my latest Listener an appeal by the Hokianga Co-operative Medical Service entitled "The Best of All Adventures." This appeal was timely, and for the most part well conceived, especially in its references to the poor remuneration at present offered to ‘student and trained nurses, and to the necessity for order and discipline among the former. At the same time, I and I am sure many of the 300 male nursing orderlies and male nurses throughout New Zealand who may read it would like to ask the anonymous doctor what authority or reason he has for the statement he makes in the fourth paragraph: "That men could nurse is ridiculous, and physiologically impossible." Even if "physiologically" is a misprint for "psychologically," I protest. I fully realise that there are some forms of nursing which are unsuited to men, particularly cases met with in the course of district nursing, but the statement as it stands seems far too sweeping, and runs counter to the experience of many doctors, both in the army and in large civilian hospitals in our main -centres, and also of some matrons and sisters who have the opportunity of evaluating the work of male nursing orderlies. I am on the nursing staff, 10 in number, of a 50-bed hospital for chronic and incurable men, and I consider that the work is definitely unsuited to women, and particularly to young girls. We have no women as student nurses, but a trained nurse as sister in charge to supervise and organise our work. I notice too that the Medical Superintendent of Cornwall Hospital, Auckland, has asked his board to consider the appointment of more male nurses, for precisely this type of work.

JOHN H. T.

CURNOW

(Ashburton).