The Position of Nursing in Hospitals in Bristol

It is only after considerable hesitation and, indeed, with some trepidation that a mere hospital administrator ventures to write upon such a subject as the position of nursing in hospitals. The author of this article was, however, emboldened to accept |he Editor's invitation to do so for two compelling reasons. The first is the intrinsic importance of the subject. The second is that all those concerned in hospital management are necessarily also concerned in problems of nursing staffing and that the nursing staffing of hospitals is, in turn, inextricably entangled with the problems of nurse training. I myself believe that there is no conflict, in the widest context, between hospital management wishing to staff its hospitals with the best nurses in the largest Possible numbers and the leaders of the nursing profession desirous of improving the standards of nurse training and the arrangements for carrying it out. This is because, 111 the last resort, and over the country as a whole, standards of staffing will both follow and reflect the standards of nurse-training, or, to put it bluntly, I think that the hospital service as a whole will get the nurses its deserves. Thus it behoves hospital management to give the closest attention to the views of the nursing profession on all matters of nurse-training, which views management can only ignore or overrule at considerable risk.