Report from the Select Committee on Nursing Homes (Registration).
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Nursing Homes (Registration)
- Date:
- 1926
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report from the Select Committee on Nursing Homes (Registration). Source: Wellcome Collection.
242/284 (page 216)
![15 June, 1926. ] Mr. good number of nursing homes ?—I always have a look at them when I go to a nurs- ' ing home to see what they are like. 3537. Is it your general practice when you go to a nursing home? Do you have a look all over the place if you have a patient in it?—Yes, always. 3538. Do you go into the kitchen ?— Sometimes. 3539. Do you look at the linen to see what sort of stock they have got?—No, I have not done that. ° 3540. Is that an abuse sometimes, do you think that there is not a sufficient quantity of linen?—I could not say from personal knowledge on that point. 3041. That is a nurse’s point, is it not? —I think so, yes. 3542. Do you think if we have inspec- tion it should be inspection by a Doctor ? —A Doctor and a nurse, not qua nurse, but a nurse who has had experience in public health work, or similar work. 3543. Would you say the County Medical Officer is the person ?—I think it should be under the Ministry of Health. 3044. The Ministry of Health to create a staff for the inspection of nursing homes all over the country ?—Yes. 3545. A special staffP—Yes, of medical people of good standing on the lines on which the King’ Fund inspect the hos- voluntary probably. 3546. Do you think that the work is well done under the inspection by the King’s Fund?—I think it is done very well by the Doctor and the layman. 3047. Taking the nursing question, what is your experience with regard to the qualification of the nurses in the majority of these nursing homes P—Of, course, in a great many of them a certain number of them are not trained nurses. That does not apply to the homes T go to, because I would not go there if I thought there were any untrained nurses ' there. 3048. You think that all the nurses should be trained ?—Hvery nurse ought _to be fully trained; the public pay for it, and they ought to get it . 3549. There is no room for these un- qualified probationers and unqualified ward maids?—Certainly not. Sir Richard Luce. 3550. I take it that you come here to vepresent the Royal British Nurses Asso- [| Continued. ¥.R.O.8. ciation; that is the chief reason you have come to-day ?—Yes. 3551. You are speaking more, perhaps, from the point of view of protecting the nurses’ position in this matter for the moment than you are from the point of view of the actual necessities of your patientsP—No. I am speaking from the point of view of the public. 3552. Are you speaking of the public as your patients—As my patients. 3553. Of course, you are recommending very large reforms in the nursing world? —Yes. 3554. Do you consider that those re- forms are absolutely necessary, or are they necessary in the interests of surgery, for instance, and medicine ?—I think they ought to be. They have done it in America; why should not we do it here? 3555. You think that it would be actually to the advancement of the results of scientific medicine if those reforms were carried out. You do not think that the best work can be done in the nursing homes as they exist to-day ?—Not in the majority of them’, 3506. You think the cases actually suffer from that fact at the present time P—TI think they do in some. T think the point is, if I may put it in this way, that the rich should be able to be as well treated as the poor. 3057. If your requirements had to be carried out they would have to be very . rich, would they not?—No; I do not agree with that. 3058. Do not you agree that to estab- lish a really suitable nursing home of the hospital type would be a very ex- pensive business at the present time?— Yes. You can take them in at 12 to 15 guineas a week at the present time. 3559. You think 1t could be done for carefully. 3560. On a larger scale?—Well, on a larger scale than it is done at present. 3561. That would mean practically the elimination of the present system. It would mean that it would all have to be done by companies or corporations ; it could not be done in the present way as it is now done by nurses?—No. 3562. That would be. an impossibility. The class of nursing home which is run by a nurse putting her savings into it, or whatever little money she has, would have to be eliminated by your reforms? —Yes](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32170051_0242.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
