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114
Nurses Registration Bill.
A Bill to regulate the Qualifications of Trained Nurses and to provide
for their registration.
This Bill has been prepared at the instance of the Central Committee
for the State Registration of Trained Nurses, which represents by delegation
the British Medical Association, the Matrons' Council of Great
Britain and Ireland, the Royal British Nurses' Association, the Society
for the State Registration of Trained Nurses, the Fever Nurses' Association,
the Association for the Promotion of the Registration of Nurses
in Scotland, the Scottish Nurses' Association, and the Irish Nurses'
Association, comprising not less than 30,000 medical practitioners and
nurses.
Hitherto no minimum standard of knowledge for professional
nurses has been defined or enforced. The object of the Bill is to ensure
that the community shall have a guarantee that the nurses they employ
are skilled in their professional duties, and through standardisation to
give security to the public that the services of fully qualified nurses
shall be readily obtainable.
The Bill establishes a "General Council for the Registration of
Nurses in the United Kingdom,"composed of persons appointed by the
Privy Council, the Local Government Boards in the United Kingdom,
associations of registered medical practitioners, and direct representatives
of the nursing profession. The duties and powers of this Council are
defined in clause 10 of the Bill; amongst the most important of them
are the standardisation of training, and the examination and registration
of nurses.
In 1905 a Select Committee of the House of Commons on registration
of nurses, which took evidence during two sessions, unanimously reported
that "Your committee are agreed that it is desirable that a register of
nurses should be kept by a central body appointed by the State."
The registration of trained nurses is in force in Cape Colony, Natal,
the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony in South Africa, in New
Zealand, in the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba in Canada, in the
State of Queensland, Australia, in the Bombay Presidency in India, in
38 of the United States of America, in the German Empire, and in Belgium.