NURSES FOR THE ARMED FORCES MONDAY, MARCH 26, 1945 UNITED STATES SENATE, Washington, D. C. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10 a. m., in room 242, Senate Office Building, Senator Elbert D. Thomas (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Thomas (chairman) and Maybank. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please come to order. Mrs. Rogers, for the record, will you make your statement as you want it to appear, please. STATEMENT OF HON. EDITH NOURSE ROGERS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Mrs. ROGERS. I am going to speak briefly on the provision of the bill that has to do with the nurses for the Veterans' Administration. I have felt for a long time that the only solution of the nursing problem in the Veterans' Administration is a permanent medical corps, which includes, of course, a permanent nurses corps. The greatest need at the present time is a permanent corps for the nurses in the Veterans' Administration. They are about 850 nurses short as of today, and they are asking for 1,000 nurses by the 1st of July, and 2,000 during the following year. In fact, our World War Veterans Committee was told on Saturday that there were wards in hospitals that they could not open because of the shortage of nurses. I have a statement here which I would like to read into the record as to the number of patients and nurses for patients. (The statement is as follows:) INFORMATION ON NURSING ACTIVITIES, VETERANS' ADMINISTRATION REVISED ESTIMATES OF NURSING NEEDS AS OF JUNE 30, 1945 AND JANUARY 1, 1947 Based upon the present schedule of additional Facilities coming into operation, training needs and staffing for emergency expansion: June 30, 1945, 1,000. This figure does not contemplate losses by resignation, which represents positions to be filled, this loss presently approximating 100 per month. January 1, 1947, 3,000 additional. This figure does not contemplate losses by resignations and other reasons, which losses presently approximate 100 per month. These estimated needs do not include present vacancies which total approximately 800 as of November 30, 1944. Senior cadet nurses are assigned in 34 hospitals. As of March 15, 1945, 769 senior cadet nurses have been assigned. The present ratio of nurses to patients is 1 to 7.7 in general medical hospitals. The minimum standard ratio is 1 to 6.5 to 1 to 7, depending on the size of the hospital. The present ratio in tuberculosis hospitals is 1 to 8.68, while the minimum standard is from 1 to 6.5 to 1 to 7, depending on the size of the hospital. The present ratio in neuropsychiatric hospitals is 1 to 35.18, while the minimum standard ratio is from 1 to 25 to 1 to 28, depending on the size of the hospital. In the last 2 years the Veterans' Administration has appointed 2,657 nurses and 2,164 nurses have resigned. Only graduate nurses who are registered may be employed, with the exception of those nurses who are graduates of recognized training schools but have not received their registration numbers. The minimum educational qualifications for appointment as nurse to the Veterans' Administration are the same as those of the Army, Navy, United States Public Health Service, and private hospitals. The physical requirements for nurses in the Veterans' Administration have been lowered. Number of patients admitted between July 1, 1943, and June 30, 1944, 175,597; number of patients discharged during this period, 165,179; 5,019 authorized nurse positions; 838 vacancies as of January 1, 1945. Even though the vacancies in the nursing positions would indicate that the situation is not too serious, it is desired to point out that the nurses we are presently employing are nurses over the age of 45 years. Many of them have not been active in institutional nursing for many years, and while they are willing and eager, they are unable to cover assignments as readily as a younger person or as someone who had been doing institutional nursing through the years. Another point is the fact that the number of ward attendants has been greatly reduced. In this group we are also employing men and women over 45 years of age. The Army has given the Veterans' Administration limited-service men, but this group is constantly changing, as 6 months is the longest period they may be assigned to the Veterans' Administration, since this is a special training program. New veterans' facilities are being opened from time to time which increase the patient load. The nurses that have stayed in the Veterans' Administration and taken care of the patients deserve enormous credit. They have worked for less pay than they could have received if they went into Navy hospitals or civilian hospitals. They have taken that work because they wanted to help disabled veterans. The CHAIRMAN. How greatly would it increase standards if the War Department assigned purses to the veterans' hospitals, and the Navy Department assigned them? Mrs. ROGERS. I think it would help those nurses who go in and are accepted by the Navy and the Army, but it wouldn't help the nurses that were not accepted. You would have a corps that would be divided. Some would be military and some would be under the civil service. It is manifestly unfair today that the civil service gives the nursing profession a subprofessional rating. The CHAIRMAN. Don't they receive even professional rating? The CHAIRMAN. Will it take legislation to correct that? Mrs. ROGERS. Yes; it will take legislation. But that would not solve the difficulty. The nurses are entitled to the benefits of a permanent corps. They ought to be allowed insurance and all the benefits that the nurses in the Army and Navy have. It is the only way you are going to have an adequate corps to take care of our disabled. So far as the drafting of nurses is concerned, nobody wants to draft the nurses. I don't think we have wanted to draft anybody, but you are faced with the fact that the nurses are not coming in as fast as they must if we are going to take care of our men. seems to me, we can do is provide necessary care. The least, it Ir the First World War I was overseas and visited and worked in hospitals. I worked steadily in an Army hospital from 1918 to 1922 and for three Presidents I covered the country inspecting hospitals in the care of our servicemen and the veterans. I was overseas last September and October and saw the remarkable work of the nurses there. Because they work so tirelessly, in every type of Army and Navy hospital in England, France, and Belgium, many lives were saved. You have mishaps in hospitals if you don't have enough nurses to watch the patients. A nurse is with the patient all the time and watches the slightest change. That is very true also of the care of the mentally sick. All the new and present drugs mean added care and watching of patients. The CHAIRMAN. Would it take legislation to have the Nurses' Training Corps for the Veterans' Administration? Mrs. ROGERS. Yes; it would take legislation. I introduced a bill to form a medical corps and want to form a nurses' corps immediately. This must be done in order to insure adequate care for our veterans. I introduced the first one in 1926. I feel there ought to be an amendment in this bill they have under discussion if you decide to draft them for the Veterans' Administration as General Hines suggested that would provide that they would be there pending the establishment of a permanent corps. You see, if you draft these nurses it would only be a temporary measure during the war, and the Veterans' Administration is going on after the war is over and will increase in size and in importance. The CHAIRMAN. There would be no need of drafting if the corps were set up, as there would be plenty of students that would apply for instruction in your nursing schools. Mr. ROGERS. I think that is true, Mr. Chairman, but they may not go into the Veterans' Administration. We must make sure that we have the adequate number of nurses to take care of the patients. It is a very unhappy thing, I think, for a soldier about to be discharged from the military service to feel that he won't get adequate care because of shortage of nurses in the Veterans' Administration. He then becomes the forgotten man. There are some 500 World War II spinal-cord cases in Veterans' Administration hospitals at present. They need special care. The CHAIRMAN. Don't you think the educational program provides a large enough pool for all these activities when once it begins to graduate its full quota? Mrs. ROGERS. I don't know how many will go into the military services. Up to the time the draft bill was introduced, I understand, they had not met their quota. The CHAIRMAN. Well, they haven't graduated yet. You won't get the normal graduates until 1946. Mrs. ROGERS. You don't know how many will want to go into the Army and Navy and Veterans' Administration hospitals then. The need for nurses is now. The CHAIRMAN. You are going to make your veterans' nurses school voluntary and you won't know how many will go there either, but since the girls who go into the Nurse Corps are being trained primarily for Government service, excepting where it has been directed that they go in other directions to take care of civilian need, I am sure that as it works out there will be a supply of nurses for all of these. Mrs. ROGERS. I felt very sorry that the Army and Navy did not want to have training schools. I understand the Navy did want to have the training school but gave it up because they were told the cadet corps would supply them with the nurses. If they had had their training schools they would have had the benefit of a good many nurses all the time. The CHAIRMAN. As far as the Navy is concerned, they have more than they need now. Mrs. ROGERS. But they would have been training them for the Army. The CHAIRMAN. Of course, this nurse emergency is only 3 or 4 months old. Mrs. ROGERS. I think anyone who has been overseas or who has visited our hospitals in the United States or anyone who has been following the figures, seeing the casualties, should have realized there would be a shortage. There has been a shortage in the Veterans' Administration for many months. The CHAIRMAN. The plan for a separate nurses corps, I think that ought to be handled by the committees that deal with the educational and public health features. The expansion is probably greater than anticipaged a year ago or a few years ago, and with different kinds of hospitals and different kinds of treatment Mrs. ROGERS (interposing). I have felt the Veterans' Administration was not building for this war but that they were building only for the peak load of World War I. The CHAIRMAN. I am sure these things are pretty much in our minds, but you can't always determine exactly what you want. Maybe you can. Mrs. ROGERS. I have been trying to get this corps bill for so many years. The CHAIRMAN. It will be worked out, I am sure. Mrs. ROGERS. They have done a marvelous job. No one knows better than I do now efficiently and tirelessly they have worked, and that is another reason I feel that new nurses ought to be coming in to relieve them. May I read this into the record? The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Mrs. ROGERS. I suggest, Mr. Chairman, amendment to H. R. 2277, page 4, line 3, after the word "and" following the comma, insert pending establishment of a Veterans' Administration Nurse Corps,"; Page 4, line 3, strike the word "no" and substitute therefor the word "any". Page 4, line 5, strike the words "shall be". Page 4, line 7, after the word "title" insert "shall be commissioned in the Army Nurse Corps and assigned to detached service with". Page 4, line 7, strike the words "unless and until she has been released by". Page 4, line 8, strike the words "Administrator of". Page 4, line 8, strike the word "Affairs" and substitute therefor the word "Administration". The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mrs. Rogers. We appreciate your coming. STATEMENT OF MRS. MILDRED SCOTT OLMSTED, WOMEN'S COMMITTEE TO OPPOSE CONSCRIPTION Mrs. OLMSTED. I am Mrs. Mildred Scott Olmsted, a social worker by profession and a member of the American Association of Social Workers. At present I am the director of the Women's Committee to Oppose Conscription. I am also the mother of three children. In my capacity of social worker I spent 3 years in a hospital. I also went overseas after the last war, under the Y. M. C. A., in canteen work with the soldiers, and remained to do work in the devastated areas of France under the American Red Cross and to extend the feeding of starving civilian populations under the American Relief Administration. I am a member of the Women's Overseas Service League and the American Legion Auxiliary. I am here because our committee is so greatly troubled by the proposal to draft nurses which is now before you. This committee is not a permanent organization but a temporary committee which sprang into existence primarily among church women nearly two and a half years ago when the proposals first began to appear in the newspapers that Congress was being asked to draft women. The committee is under the joint chairmanship of three prominent church leaders; Dr. Georgia Harkness, of the Garrett Biblical Institute; Mrs. Allen Knight Chalmers, a member of the National Board of the Y. W. C. A. in New York; and Mrs. Alexander Stewart, the wife of a prominent Methodist minister in Chicago. Its membership consists of between four and five thousand women in every State in the country and in Alaska and Puerto Rico. These women are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, they represent wealthy homes and poor homes and their husbands are farmers, laborers, professional people, in short those who make up the background of America. They have only one thing in common, their strong conviction that it would be a fundamental and lasting blow to American life to conscript women and that it would fundamentally change the character of our country. We had selected as our representative before this committee today Mrs. Joanna Lindlof, a very well-known woman who was for many years one of the most progressive spirits on the Board of Education of the New York Public Schools; unfortunately she was taken ill over the week end, so I am here in her place. In the first place, I want to make it absolutely clear that I personally, and all the members of our committee, want every injured man to be given the very best of care. We feel that it is the least that we can do for these men, but we do not feel that the solution is to extend conscription to nurses. I was talking just last night to one of the student cadet nurses, who tells me that every single person who is in that is preparing to volunteer. The nurses themselves are circulating dozens and dozens of petitions-I don't know whether any of them have reached this committee or not-asking that their service be left on a voluntary basis, and one of the reasons for that is because they feel that it is a serious reflection on nurses. Secondly, these younger nurses are greatly concerned because they find in talking among their friends that if it is made compulsory it will discourage people from volunteering for the Nurses Corps, and 70840-458 |