The Waterbury Democrat., 1932-07-19
Brattleboro Plan
 Cuts Sick Burdens
Nursing and Hospital Experiment Claimed By Medical
 Care Costs Committee to Benefit Public

member m at home to receive the service of fuil-time graduate nurse at one-third the regular rate. Or if the sickness does not require the services of a gfadt- ato nurse and 1t is desirable that some housekeeping service should also be done by the nurse, the member of the benefit association may obtain attendant nurses for ore-half the regular charges. The hospital benefit premiums are higher than the nursing pre- miums. Upon payment of &1 n year for children, $6 for single per- sons, and S7.5O for married cou- ples the hospital benefit associa-
 ton agrees to pay full costs above $50, but not in excess of $500 for an operation involving hospitaiiza-
 ton, including the surgeons charg- es for the operation. In non-slir- gical cases, with certain exceptions,
 1t will pay one-half of the costs of
 regular hospital accommodations
 excluding physicians. fees. If suitable medical, hospital, or nursing service cannot, for any rea- son, be obtained locally, provision
 is usuatlly made to transfer the patient elsewhere, the same berie-
 fits applying.
 Among the factors which the authors consider responsible for the development of the attendant
 nursing service in Brattleboro are
 the following:
 (1) The old spirit of neighbor- | ly assistance in times of sickness
 was disappearing.
 .(2) The cost of a graduate nurse was prohibitive for some 1 families.
 (3) The number of trained nurses in the community was of-
 ten not adequate to meet the de- | nnand.
 (4) Many cases of illness did
 not require hospital care or the | such patients 1t was not only econ | tial part of the healing process
 that the household machinery should run continuously and smoothly"
 Tn both city and country" the
 report states, there is distinct insufficiency of women trained to
 do simple nursing and to assume
 responsibility for housekeeping
 tasks"
 The policy of the Brattleboro
 Mutual Aid association, which
 regulates the activity of most of the attendant nurses, is to confine
 the field of the attendant to the
 mildly i'll, convalescent, or chronic case; and the attendants are not
 sent on pneumonia, typhoid fever,
 or contagious disease cases unless
 there Is also graduate, nurse in
 attendance.
 In addition to her nursing ser
 vices, the attendant is prepared to
 assume general responsibility for
 housekeeping, buying. planning of
 meals. and washing the pa- tient's or baby's clothes" The attendants are given fifteen
 months of training at the Thomp- son Training School for Attend ] ant Nurses. The first year after graduation they are paid $21 a
 week for their services; after the first year, $23 weekly; and after
 the fifth year. $26. When avail able for duty but not employed. the attendants on the staff of the Brat
 tleboro Mutual Aid association are
 allowed $1 day.
 Training Needed The authors of the report sug- gest that a limited number of, in-
 stitutions throughout the United States might advantageously train attendant nurses. The report
 states, 'In view of the efforts be- ing made to raise the standards of
 graduate nurses, the need for for-
 nal training of a subsidiary type of nurse appears greater than for | inerly. The approach should be experimental and a limited num-
 Der of institutions with satisfactory
 clinical material might we'll begin
 to train attendants. If the result
 should be satisfactory, a larger
 number of attendants could then be trained.
 "The training of attendant nurs-
 es, who after graduation work un- der the supervision of public health l nurses, seems to offer Q solution among certain economic groups" for the problem of providing sim-
 pie nursing care combined with
 housekeeping service.
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