Report of the Working Party on the Recruitment and Training of Nurses.

Date:
1947
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Working Party on the Recruitment and Training of Nurses. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    TABLE XIII Proportions of nurses* in hospitals at different levels of intelligence Intelligence Groups Grade of Nurse a Total Trained Nurses and Midwives..| 13-8 25°3 41-5 13-5 6-0 100-0 Student Nurses and cae Midwives ; 24-6 28-9 32-7 9-9 3°9 100-0 Assistant and other Nurses st 4-2 16:0 32-5 24-5 22-8 100-0 DOTAL. * 52 asf Lors 24°5 35:9 14-7 9:1 100-0 * Including male nurses. 56. The extremely wide range of ability in the nursing profession in hospitals shows clearly that it is not to be regarded as a homogeneous group as far as suitability for the profession is concerned. It is inconceivable that persons differing so very widely in their intellectual capacity should respond to the same training or be fitted to discharge the same functions. On the one hand, we have some 40 per cent. falling in the top 30 per cent. of the population in intelligence ; on the other, we have possibly as much as 24 per cent. of the profession who are in the lowest 30 per cent. of the population in regard to intelligence, and these are not all assistant nurses or pupil assistant nurses. While it is true that nearly half of the assistant and other untrained nurses (apart from students) appear to be in the lowest 30 per cent. of the population in ability, only 20 per cent. of trained hospital nurses, and 14 per cent. of student nurses, seem to fall into this relatively poor sector. But in absolute numbers there are more trained and student nurses in hospital at this low level of ability than there are assistant nurses. If the training scheme we propose in Chapter IX requires persons of at least average ability to profit from it then possibly as much as 30 per cent. of the present student population would seem to be unsuitable for admission to training. It should be borne in mind, however, as indicated above, that the efficiency of the Matrix test is much less at low score levels than at high score levels. 57. On the other hand, the data indicate that there are many assistant (and other untrained) nurses with an intellectual capacity in no way inferior to that of the best student or trained nurses. At least 1 in every 5 assistant nurses in hospital—possibly about 6,000 in all—is in the top 30 per cent. of the population in. AS and another | in 7 is above the average. 58. Mental as compared with non-mental hospitals. The nursing staffs of the non-mental hospitals tend to have a higher level of ability than those in the mental hospitals and institutions. ‘The proportion of non-mental trained and student nurses in Group A is three times as high as the corresponding proportion in mental hospitals. At the lower end of the scale of intelligence, the proportion of mental nurses in Group E is five times as high as the corresponding proportion of non- mental nurses ; so we must conclude that the mental hospitals and institutions, as at present constituted, fail to attract a sufficient proportion of abler recruits.