Welsh Journals

WALES AT WORK THE SOUTH WALES NURSING ASSOCIATION Hon. Secretary Lady St. Davids, Lydstep Haven, Penally, S.O., Pern. The sixth annual conference of the South Wales Nursing Association was held on January 29th, at the City Hall, Cardiff. The Association is affiliated with the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute, and Miss Amy Hughes, the General Superintendent of the Institute, dealt with the present urgent need for more nurses, the increasing responsibilities of District Nurses and the importance of grants from Public Bodies for special work. The South Wales Nursing Association is the representative of the Queen's Jubilee Institute in South Wales, for the following purposes: To help to provide for the further development and efficiency of District Nursing throughout Wales. To give advice to affiliated Nursing Associations and to organize local Nursing Associations. Although the South Wales Nursing Association always recommends the employment of Queen's Nurses where practicable, it is found that in some of the rural districts it is at present impossible for lack of sufficient funds to support a Queen's Nurse, and they have been entrusted by the Queen's Jubilee Institute with the training of Village Nurses who receive twelve months' training-four months' midwifery and eight months' general training- in return for which they undertake to work as District Nurses under the auspices of the South Wales Nursing Association at a guaranteed salary for a period of three years. It is pleasant to note that thirty-six Village Nurses have already been trained by the South Wales Nursing Association, and that their work (with hardly any exception) has given .the greatest satis- faction, and that nearly all have continued to work under agreement with the Association after the guaranteed period of three years has elapsed. There are now over 75 District Nursing Associa- tions affiliated to the South Wales Nursing Associa- tion, many of which employ Queen's Nurses. Four of the Welsh County Councils have given scholarships for midwifery and grants for general training to suitable candidates, who have been trained under the auspices of the South Wales Nursing Association. This co-ordinated work is most valuable, a„ the County Councils have power to give grants for training, but have no power to give salaries whereas the great voluntary organiza- tions have been formed to meet this special need, and by their method of forming an active centre of work for affiliated District Nursing Associations that unite to maintain a high standard of efficiency, they are able to supply Nurses and also to guarantee a suitable salary to those who have already been trained. The value of co-ordination is being more fully realized every year, and it is hoped that closer co-operation between the County Authorities and the voluntary agencies may soon be established so both will gain thereby. In South Wales the Welsh National Memorial Association gives grants for tuberculosis nursing in co-operation with the North and South Wales Nursing Associations, and in some Welsh Counties school nursing is entrusted to District Nurses, and special grants are made to the District Nursing Associations when this work is undertaken by them. During last year a series of important County conferences were held to consider the best schemes for co-ordinating nursing work in Breconshire, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, and sym- pathetic consideration was given to the difficult problems that have to be faced. The need for more District Nurses with midwifery training is urgent. In many rural districts the only available midwives are aged-some are still at work at eighty-and in some there are no trained mid- wives at all. The County Authorities have at present no statutory powers to establish them, but they can help the work of the voluntary agencies by giving grants when the District Nursing Associa- tions are willing that their nurses shall undertake school nursing, health visiting, or duties under the Notification of Births Act. WELSH NATIONAL MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION J No better proof of the value and soundness of the work of the Memorial Association can be offered than the substantial tributes paid to it from time to time by the medical profession. The Council of the Association meeting at Swansea on Jan. 22nd, had before it three such tributes-the gift of a freehold mansion at Newport by Sir Garrod Thomas; the gift of a new operating table for the Glan Ely Tuberculosis Hospital, Cardiff, by Mr. Lynn Thomas, C.B. and the acceptance by Dr. Robert Jones, the eminent surgeon from Liver- pool, of the position of honorary surgeon at the institutions of the Association in North Wales. Other substantial gifts were also reported-hundreds of trees for the North Wales Sanatorium by Mr,