NURSES AND PATIENTS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Given the desperate shortage of nurses in this country, the over-staffing of nurses at Stillman infirmary is unconscionable. The average daytime nurse-patient ratio at Stillman is 1:8 in contrast, for example, to 1:13 at Boston City Hospital where medical problems are much more serious. (Among the less educated and poor, people often do not go to a hospital until in or near critical condition). If this difference in ratio were fully reflected in a difference in medical care it might be justifiable, but many of Stillman's nurse-hours are employed making beds, serving cookies, filling juice pitchers and performing other such non-medical tasks. Untrained service personnel could assume many of these tasks.

After speaking to patients and nurses at Stillman, I have found little evidence of benficial nurse-patient relationships developing at cookie-serving time. Even, however, to the extent that there is some value to the "non-professional" functions of nurses in their professional capacity at other hospitals with serious under-staffing. (According to the head nurse at Boston City Hospital, that hospital has funds to hire more nurses but finds the supply exhausted). While the relative security of a Stillman nursing position attracts enough nurses to allow perpetuation of the present situation, the present situation is morally unjustifiable. As a secondary consideration, a change in Stillman staffing policy would have the UHS thousands of dollars a year in the difference between salaries of nurses and untrained service personnel who would replace the nurses in many duties. Both economic and moral considerations demand an immediate change in policy; the UHS administration has contemplated such a change and should now act. Lewis Popper '68