Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Whittingham Hospital.
- Great Britain. Committee of Inquiry into Whittingham Hospital.
- Date:
- [1972]
Licence: Open Government Licence
Credit: Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Whittingham Hospital. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![geriatric and long-stay wards with no opportunity to work with newly admitted and acute disturbed patients or occupational /industrial patient units. I have had little or no experience in modern treatment and patient care... . Ward allocation of student nurses is not adequately considered in relation to the requirements of nurse training. ...I fee] that the nursing administration from Ward Sister level upwards cannot direct enough time to help student nurses in training ...”. From all we heard in evidence—from the Hospital Management Committee Chairman, the nursing chiefs and the older charge nurses as well as the students—and from our impressions on visiting the hospital, we were in no doubt that this type of complaint was to a large extent justified. 76. Another serious complaint arose from the practice of “ relieving ’’, that is of students being loaned to other wards short of nurses from those to which they were officially allocated under “ change lists”. Students alleged that this was carried out to such an extent, particularly on the female side, that the lists themselves were meaningless and consequently students did not obtain a balanced programme according to General Nursing Council training specifications. Matron said in evidence that “relieving”? was for periods of 1-3 weeks in a three month period and that shortage of staff made the practice inevitable. We have no doubt that here too the students were justified, though the difficulties of the nursing administration on both sides must be acknowledged. We also believe that some of the wards entered on the students’ records as “acute” contained a proportion of long-stay patients and that this contributed to the students’ grievances. 77. The standard of residential accommodation for nurses varies but was not the subject of complaint at our Inquiry. The women’s is very good while the men’s, though less satisfactory, is being upgraded. Com- plaints were limited to various problems in the female nurses’ home and as they have since been met, they do not seem to us now to be of great importance. The main trouble related to keys and hours and seems to have arisen about the time of Mrs. Bunn’s arrival, with her daughters, to live in a flat at the home. A group of student nurses objected to the prevailing rule that they should be in by 11.30 p.m. or apply to the Warden for a key if they wished to stay out later (the time was 10.30 for those under 18, who had to ask their parents’ permission to be out after that time). This rule they felt to be an unwarranted intrusion into their private lives. There was a Significant divergence here between students and enrolled nurses and between native born and foreign girls. There were no complaints from the foreign girls, perhaps because they were accustomed to a more restrictive attitude to young people. We believe there is some substance in the Warden’s contention that trouble in the Nurses’ Home was stimulated by Mrs. Bunn’s arrival, though we think that the Warden, herself a kindly person, took an unduly simple view of matters and was out of touch with the feeling of the students. It is clear that Mrs. Wilson resented the intrusion of Mrs. Bunn, a younger woman with children of her own, who immediately established a closer personal relationship with the girls. The students’ grievances were met in September 1970 by providing keys to all student nurses over the age of 18 and in our view the main lesson that emerges is that the appointment of the Chief Male Nurse’s wife as Warden was a](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32223444_0039.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
