VOLUNTARY WORKERS IN HOSPITALS.
[To TH1 EDITOR or 131 "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—I have read with interest in your issues of July 3rd and 10th letters relating to the V.A.D. workers and their treatment by the trained staff in hospitals. I should like to say that since the beginning of the war I have worked in three different hospitals as a probationer, having had no previous training other than the bandaging of Boy Scouts practised by most V.A.D. detachments in peace time. In each of these hospitals nothing could exceed the kindness and consideration shown to the probationers by the Matron and Sisters. Every opportunity is given to the probationers to learn and improve, and as soon as they have proved themselves capable they are allowed to do the simpler dress- ings and help with the nursing of the patients. Many of them are now doing work which the ordinary probationer does not expect to do till the end of her second year. Of course such work is done under supervision, but the super. vision is invariably kind and helpful. Mistakes, failure to understand orders, and the involuntary breaches of etiquette with which the V.A.D. member, however well-meaning, must repeatedly harrow the feelings of the trained worker, are met with patience and forbearance. It must be remembered that the " upper and lower boy" system referred to in your
footnote is very prevalent in hospitals as regards the real probationer, so that if V.A.D. members do suffer from it they are only having a taste of the real thing. No girl worth her salt will wish to be placed on a special footing because she is working voluntarily and not earning the few pounds a year paid to the bard-driven first-year nurse in peace times. Your correspondent " Englishwoman " refers to the fact that many V.A.D. members are doing work for which their usual surroundings and upbringing have not accustomed them; but surely very few young women who take up nursing as a means of livelihood have been brought up to the incessant round of housework and drudgery that awaits them as novices in hospital. The more distasteful duties of nursing must come to most of them quite as much as a rude awakening as to their more fortunate sisters who need not set forth to earn their living. Let the V.A.D. member hear in mind (a) the arduous three years' training of the real nurse; (b) that she herself knows nothing ; and I do not think she will resent the behaviour of professional nurses towards her, even if it should be somewhat distressful and overbearing at first. Of course, if the V.A.D. worker is going to consider herself, as your correspondent suggests, a fine-edged tool put to the wrong purpose, she is unlikely to enjoy her hospital sojourn, and her services to her country will probably be of the smallest. —I
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