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.

    67/132 (page 59)
    distinguish them if the procedure of selection is to be designed on the right lines. First we found, in following up and interviewing a sample of ex-students, that roughly one-third were apparently not fitted for nursing as a career, owing to instability or unsuitability of temperament, and should not have been accepted. With a proper technique of selection such candidates could probably be picked out at entry. 167. The second line of evidence emerges from our suryey of the mental ability of hospital nursing staffs. We found that perhaps as many as 14 per cent. of student nurses fell into the lowest third of the population in respect of intelligence. It is difficult to believe that these students, whatever other admirable qualities they might possess, would pass the State examinations or, if they did, could carry out the duties of a trained nurse with due skill and responsibility. Certainly they are most unlikely to be able to eee the proposed new training course successfully in the time envisaged. 168. This does not imply that we regard the present State examinations, by themselves, as a satisfactory criterion of nurse quality. Indeed, there is evidence from a special inquiry* which we have carried out that little or no relationship holds between State examination marks and assessments of nurse quality or proficiency made a year later by senior nursing staff of the hospital where the candidate is employed. Nevertheless, it must be conceded that the capacity to acquire the knowledge and skill needed for trained nursing, which is not necessarily the same as ability to pass the present State examinations, demands a level of intelligence superior to that of the lowest third of the population. 169. It may well be that the relatively large proportion of students unsuitable for nurse training on grounds of ability or personality was, at the time of our investigation, higher than it would be in normal peace-time circumstances. Many of the students tested or interviewed must have entered nurse training not spon- taneously, or with any genuine interest in nursing as such, but simply as an alter- native to other work of national importance. It would not, therefore, be surprising if they included a disproportionately large number of unsuitable types. 170. Perhaps a quarter of the student intake in recent years were unsuitable for nurse training, and this may be the upper limit to be expected at the entry stage. About half of these would appear to be temperamentally, and half intellectually unfitted for nurse training. It would be wise to exclude altogether from any form of nursing those who are temperamentally unsuitable. We suggest this because a significant proportion of those students who had abandoned training were found to be temperamentally unfit for nursing. Many, if not most, of those with low ability, on the other hand, either contrive successfully to negotiate the State examinations, or, if they fail, take up employment as Assistant Nurses. 171. Before the war, the standard of admission for student nurses laid down by the General Nursing Councils was the possession of a recognised educational qualification or success in the Councils’ Test Examination, coupled with satisfying the hospital matron on interview. The Test Examination has been suspended for some time, but we understand it is now proposed to revive it in a modified form, to consist of an Intelligence Test, Elementary English and Arithmetic. This would be an undoubted improvement on past practice, but we believe * A follow-up study of the subsequent nursing proficiency of a 10 per cent. sample of successful candidates for the State General Examination in April, 1945.