The daily telegram. [volume] (Clarksburg, W. Va.) 1901-1926, 1912-04-25
TRA INING SCHOOL
FCR e S rs W or II
Are to Be Made So as Is
Prevent Monopoly Of
Supplies Used.

-faF lse-Se -. N~e-e
WASHINGTON, d, c.; April 25-
condltions making for ineaiciency
in schools for the professional train
ing OF nurses are dealt With In a
bulletin entitled "The Educational
Status of Nursing" which Is short
by to be issued for free distribution
by the United states Bureau Of Ed
ucation. According to the bulletin.
there are schools which admit can
didates at as early an age as IL
asking no educational qualihca-
itions except a common school edu-
cation, and sometimes not even that.
Other training schools require as
! much as twelve hours day of nurs-
ing from their students in addition
to attendance at classes and lectures.
Not infrequently, also, the students
are subjected to certain forms OF
commercial exploitation. These con-
ditions exist, Notwithstanding a
| number or advances made in recent
years in the professional training OF
nurses. The bulletin is written by
Miss N. Adelaide NGtting, director
of the Department Of Nursing and
Health, Teachers College, Column
bia University, New York, and for
merry superintendent of nurses and
principal of the Training School Of
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore,
The first count in MISS Nutting'sI
IiihpIctment 81 nurses training
schools reads In the government
publication as follows:
1.-THE condition Of training schools
which is causing grave concern
among those who have long been
struggling to improve the education
of nurses is the persistence Of low
standards for admission. The ener-
nous multiplication of hospitals and
Esanltaria throughout the coun-
try, with the consequent unrestricted
development of training schools asI
a part of their working organization,
has led to a very large demand for
students essentially for unitarian
purposes, No adequate supply
could be secured through the usual
sources with the maintenance of
suitable standards, and such stand
ards have therefore been lowered or
sacrificed to met the current needs
of institutions.
'Ehe large, best-equipped, and
well known schools naturally attract
the most desirable candid atesa yeti
not one of them is exemp from the
necessity of admittings and Keeping
in the school pupils of pittfully low
educational attachments and mental
ability in order that there may be
no disturbance or breakdown of the
system which requires the hospital
to be manned at points through
out its departments with student
nurses
Most student nurses are lacking in
two main respects-they are neither
old enough, nor well-educated
enough, to enter upon the course of
training for the profession. Re
garding age conditions, Miss Nutting
says: 4eW1E9
Until the last few years the gen.
eral age requirement for admission
to training schools was twenty-three
years, and 1t was only in exceptional
instances that students were admit
ted under that age. But of recent
years, in the effort to secure enough
,students to staff the hospitals, this
age requirement has been steadily
lowered until now in the majority
of schools C55.2 per cent? students
are admitted at twenty years or un-
der, and in 1915 per cent of all
schools they are admitted at
eighteen years of age. A further
descent may be perhaps foreshad-
owed in the record Of the two schools
admitting that they receive stu
dents of sevnteen years of age,
while there is little reason to
suppose that the age standard could
in the present day, be kept at
ltwenty-three or even twenty-five, yet
it is, a grave question whether the
admission of young, Immature girls
of eighteen. and nineteen to hospit-
al. wards, and to the heavy physical
demands and the overwhelming re-
sponsibllities and anxieties of such
work as inevitably awaits them there
nv or hu rieht a5nnlh he nnnsid-