The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-03-05
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC ), HAsKEN. Director.
Washington, d. Q.
NURSES WANTED.


is the girl who wants to be nurse
The national nursing organizations OF
, the country are looking for her. be-
cause lately, she doesn't seem to be
looking for them.
Nursing has always been a woman's
work. Out of every class of high
school graduates, or even out of gram
mar school graduating classes, there
have invaria bly, been some girls who
would be nurses. Now, one big hos
pital in New York reports that instead
of having 35 or 40 pupil nurses en-
tering each year, it gets only about
four. That proportion is repeated all
over the country, and conditions are
worse in the smaller hospital schools
where facilities for training are not SO
attractive to student nurses.
When the war offered adventure
and dramatic service to volunteer
nurses there were thousands of women
who studied and worked untiringly-
even to sacrificing their health, some
of them-so long as the fighting
| lasted. After that, like the soldiers.
most of them wanted to get back to
their regular lives. Nursing with them
was war work-incidental.
So the war did not flood the coun-
try with nurses seeking civilian en-
ployment. On the contrary, the lack
of nurses for hospitals and homes has
become acute. And because the fu-
LII Z AOOho oIllI AliOIO CAiLiCdIy Lie I'd
tiona1 nursing associations have
started a campaign to interest girls
in nursing as a profession. This cam
paign has already been taken up en-
Enthusiastically in "a states, for the need
for more nurses is nationwide.
While recruiting is being pushed, the
nursing organizations are also trying
to awaken the hospitals to the fact
that they cannot expect to attract the
kind of girls that should be in the
nursing profession unless student life
is made easier and more profitable
The hospitals were beginning to see
this for themselves and reform is
under way.
Overworked Students.
In the past. the student nurse
worked IL hours a day. Her classes
another or left out entirely when her
services were needed about the wards.
In fact; these conditions still obtain in
some training schools, but they will
not last long, because girls will not
enter these schools. Progressive hos
pltals have shortened the pupil nurses
duty to eight hours, tho in some
schools studying and class work has to
be done outside of this period.
What the nurses organizations are
saying is that no hospital should take
students for the purpose of getting
free labor. If a hospital is going to
conduct a school, it should understand
that it's obligation to the students-to
give them a thoro Trainings as great
as Its obligation to the patientS+to
give them proper treatment. That
they do not all feel this obligation
toward the nurses they are to send out
to all sorts of responsible positions is
proved by such facts as those given
by a state inspector of training schools
This inspector figures that 80 per cent
OF the training schools that he visits
are to varying extents taking unfair
advantage of their pupil nurses by
surrendering the rights of the pupils
IN the alleged interests of the sick
One way in which the pupil nurse
IS often carelessly used to help the hos
pltal is that sometimes a patient in
the hospital desires a nurse exclusively
Tor his case but cannot pay the rate
or graduate. He says he will take
an undergraduate nurse, and one of
the pupils is detailed to him at about
half the graduates fee, the money
going to the hospital. Now if this
work lasted few days, even a week,
it might be practical experience for
the student. She would learn some
thing of that particular type of dis
eases. But the case may go on for
weeks or months, and the nurse is
gaining nothing.
. oesiueS 100 long hours and q too
flexible system of instruction in train
ing schools, pupil nurses have had to
put up with bad rooming conditions
In one hospital here an unused ward
IS fltted as dormitory for the pu-
pills. In another schools the students
i've IN houses across the street from
the hospital, four or five girls in a
room. The desirable standard for
nurses quarters is a comfortable resi-
dence well lighted and heated and
separate from the hospital, with single
rooms for the students
Hospitals are having to meet higher
standards because they can no longer
overlook the fact that young women
are more cautious about starting upon
a career now than they once were.
NO girl who enters a hospital with
any understanding of the work expects
to have an easy time, but she does ex-
pect and demand a broad course of
training under livable conditions.
Girl Has Many Chances.
There are SO many other~yocations
open to the high school girl gradu-
ate now that she no longer takes nm
nursing as the alternative of a life of
teaching school. That is the main
reason why the army of nurses has
dwindled. Business, law. and other
PROFESSIONS are offering big rewards,
while the hospitals have gone on COM
plaeently thinking that the great op-
portunity for service thru nursing
would continue as sure an attraction
as ever.
Most women who take up nursing as
a profession are impressed by the pos
sibilities of the work, but nowadays a
girl who is interested in this kind of
social service is generally interested
enough to find out exactly what she
will get by her course of training. For
instance, there are fewer girls entering
those hospitals. sanatoria and private
hospitals that are not able to register
their graduates. Not to be registered
in the state means that the graduate
with her two or three years of training
cannot become member of the Red
Cross nursing association, an army or
navy nurse, nor would she be admitted
as staff nurse in most hospitals of
recognized Standing.
Training school standards are rising
and SO are the standards for nurses. At
one time girls just out of grammar