[Report 1951] / School Medical Officer of Health, West Suffolk County Council.

  • West Suffolk (England). County Council.
Date:
1951
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1951] / School Medical Officer of Health, West Suffolk County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/18 (page 11)
    HEALTH EDUCATION: PRE-NURSING COURSES. The Chief Education Officer has kindly supplied the following reports which have been received from the Headmistress of the Silver Jubilee Secondary Modern Girls’ School, Bury St. Edmunds, and the Headmaster of the Secondary Modem School, Sudbury:—- Silver Jubilee Secondary Modern Girls’ School. A pre-nursing course was started at this school in September, 1951, for girls who intend to become hospital or nursery nurses. This was done in the certain knowledge that, for girls of fifteen, educated at a secondary modern school, the best possible preparation for the hospital or nursery training is further general education at school, with some help with the study of the special subjects Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene, and some experience in taking examinations. It is, also, an aim of the course that girls proceeding to hospital training shall have passed Part 1 of the Preliminary Examination of the General Nursing Council, in order to relieve them of the strain of the study and examination during the first year of their training when they are adjusting themselves to the fatigue of work in the wards. The course is in two parts, a preliminary year for intending nursery and hospital nurses and a further two years’ course for the latter only. In the preliminary year the girls spend approxi¬ mately three-fifths of their time in general education (English, Arithmetic, Current Affairs, Scripture, Physical Training, Music, Domestic Science, and Art and Crafts or Needlework), one- fifth on the special subjects (First Aid, Home Nursing and Mothercraft) and one-fifth in work in a nursery, clinic or hospital. In this year examinations in First Aid, Home Nursing and Mother- craft are taken. For the remaining two years the proportion of time given to general education, special subjects and practical work are the same, Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene replacing First Aid, etc. At the end of the course, Part 1 of the Preliminary Examination of the General Nursing Council is taken. In September, 1951, eleven girls started the pre-nursing course, six intending hospital nurses, and five nursery nurses. Their general education is, of course, in the hands of members of the staff of the Silver Jubilee School. First Aid has been taught by Mr. F. W. Fuller, County Secretary of the British Red Cross Society, Suffolk Branch, and Mothercraft by Miss M. E. Blatchley, a School Nurse/Health Visitor, who holds the Mothercraft Teaching Certificate. Miss M. P. Mullender, the Superintendent Health Visitor, will teach Home Nursing. The visits of the girls to hospital, nursery and clinic are considered to be a most important part of the course, providing as they do the stimulus of contact with real nursing and the psychological satisfaction of beginning the work even in small ways. The girls of the Silver Jubilee School have been fortunate indeed in the opportunities provided for them by the County Medical Officer and the Children’s Officer of working in the School and Infant Welfare Clinics and in the Alexandra (Nursery) Home, and by the Matron of the West Suffolk General Hospital who has admitted them for minor duties in various departments of that hospital. Each girl will spend one whole day a week for a term at the Alexandra Home, half a day a week for half a term at the clinics and one day a week for the rest of the course at the West Suffolk Genera] Hospital. Not all who begin the course will complete it; some will discover that they have no vocation, the school will find some have insufficient ability and some will have parents, unused to the idea of so long a school life, who will withdraw the girls. For those, however, who do complete the course it should provide a useful preparation for either kind of nursing training. Sudbury Secondary Modern School. In the early summer of 1951 the idea of a Pre-Nursing Course for Girls was mooted at this school. With the encouragement and co-operation of the Chief Education Officer the Headmaster visited a school at Hitchin, Herts., where a successful Pre-Nursing Course has been in operation for nearly four years. With the knowledge gained and with the promised support of the Matron of Walnuttree Hospital, Mrs. O. H. Underhill, S.R.N., S.C.M., R.F.N., the Course was launched in September. Twelve girls aged fourteen and fifteen, drawn from Haverhill, Hadleigh, Clare, Glemsford and Sudbury, were the first to take advantage of it. Of these, one, to solve transport difficulties, has been transferred to Bury St. Edmunds, and another, for financial reasons, has had to abandon the Course. The curriculum for the group includes English, Social Studies, Religious Knowledge, History of Medicine, Anatomy, and Biology. For most of their lessons the girls are taught separately, but they join Fourth Year Forms for Games, Music, Folk-dancing, etc. During 1951 visits were paid to Red House, a Home for the Aged, the Gas Works, and Stephen Walters Silk Mills. For the coming months others, both local and further afield, are planned. Such visits have the dual aims of fostering interest in the nursing profession and of furthering general education. The course at Sudbury is under the guidance of Miss K. F. F. Shipp, and of Mr. H. C. Grant, a well-qualified science graduate and specialist in Biology. In addition to school activities, the girls attend weekly, in rotation, at Walnuttree Hospital, the School and Infant Welfare Clinics, the Nursery School, and Montgomery House, a residential nursery in Long Melford, and our thanks are due to the Heads of these organisations for their help and encouragement; without their co-operation the course would cease to function.