More Info →Foxton Maternity Home 1942-1982 Page 21

Description

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In spite of long hours of work nurses still managed to get some social life but this required escaping down the fire escape after 10pm room check by the matron.

The protective care of the students, ensuring regular meals and safe housing was very different to the current independence of nursing students. Yo did not mention any concern about living costs or income during her training years but did find that she was left in clinical situations beyond her training level and remembered being on night duty and having to special a TB patient in labour without any idea what it was all about!

This kind of situation was not uncommon and with the long hours and pressure of study, led to high drop-out rate nationally.

The schools of nursing, 41 in number by 1970 appeared to be used mainly to meet local service needs.

Hours worked are now arranged by collective or individual contracts, often negotiated by the New Zealand Nurses Organization and are required to keep within legally defined levels.

Nursing Education has been transferred from the Health to the Education Department through technical schools of nursing.

Students are no longer paid a salary or provided with board and lodgings and will usually end up in debt on graduation, as a Registered Comprehensive Nurse with a Bachelor of Nursing Degree. However, in the 1950's the protective arrangements meant that a wide range of female students could access a training that would be otherwise unavailable.

The lack of alternative funding schemes and a social climate that favoured male careers, as potential sole breadwinners for any family resources, meant that nursing was a respectable way for a woman to escape a restrictive economic background or undesired marriage.

Following the three year nursing programme and graduation a six month Maternity course was completed by Yo in November 1955. This course was expected to be taken by most graduating students to complete their education as a nurse.

The next years were spent in various places fitting around domestic circumstances and included Lower Hutt Outpatients, private nursing, and district nursing where The phone never stopped'.

The longest time was spent in a small eight bed maternity hospital where prior to the introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1960's and the lingering effects of the post World War 2 baby boom, babies were arriving in all directions!

A lot of time was needed for tasks, laundering nappies, which often ended up drying over the wood stove the cook used for meals, making pads from cotton wool and gauze, making cotton buds and autoclaving equipment. Diapers were soaked in Lysol which was very hard on nurses' hands.

A lack of disposable gloves meant improvising with finger cots and make-shift hand protection.

Four hourly vulval swabbing and mandatory breast and abdominal binding kept nurses busy and placentas were buried in the back yard.

When the hospital was full, camp stretchers were set up in the corridor and empty drawers lined with blankets used for the babies.

Present day tasks have been eased by modern disposable sterilised equipment but attitudes to tasks can be slow to change.

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Identification

Date

2005