The function of the set in hospital controlled schemes of nurse training

Abstract

In origin, nurse training in this country was a tutorial movement. As Cecil Woodham-Smith points out in her biography of Florence Nightingale, the object of the Nightingale Training School 'was to produce nurses capable of training others'.' In its development nurse training has become the means whereby hospitals recruit and attempt to retain a cheap labour force. In theory entrants to the profession enter a school of nursing which is 'attached' to or 'associated' with a particular hospital or group of hospitals. Many hospitals in this country have dispensed with the formality by which student nurses signed a contract of service. Most are acutely aware of the conflict of interest inherent in what is essentially an apprenticeship form of training. Some, at least formally, have given a measure of independence to the school by creating the position of 'Director of Nursing Education'. Yet, in practice, student nurses enter an employment situation in which, however enlightened the senior administrative nursing staff, the staffing needs of the organization are inevitably given greater priority than the educational needs of the student body. Though a few universities offer courses linked with professional nursing qualifications in which the candidate has student status throughout the training period, attempts to separate schools of nursing in general from the hospitals in this country have, so far, not met with any success. Even the Platt Committee which advocated the setting up of independent schools of nursing envisaged that these would be developed within the framework of the Health Service rather than within the framework of general educational establishments.2 They were to be professional schools rather than departments in existing universities, colleges of advanced technology or colleges of further education.t At the present time the content of the training programme in the schools of nursing is narrowly professional and the