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59
cadets—will attend part-time at a polytechnic institute, for theoretical instruction,
and part-time at a nursery for practical training.
Representative
councils
and
committees
Nurses representative councils and domestic staff committees, the setting-up of
which was advocated by the Minister of Health and Minister of Labour and National
Service in the booklet "Staffing the Hospitals," issued at the end of 1945, are now
functioning at the majority of the Council's general and special hospitals.
Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation facilities were provided at certain hospitals, and in this connection
two new grades of staff were introduced—occupational therapist and
remedial gymnast.
Hospital
libraries
Until 1945 the work of cataloguing and distributing reading material to patients
in the Council's hospitals had been undertaken by voluntary workers : but the work
at certain hospitals had increased beyond the capacity of these workers, and two
full-time librarians were experimentally appointed. During the following year, this
number was increased to five.
Catering
During the year, the Council appointed catering officers at four of its hospitals.
These officers, who are experienced in large scale catering, have immediate charge
at the hospitals at which they are employed of the whole of the catering managements,
which have thus been placed in specialist hands.
Disabled
persons
Under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act, 1944, an obligation was placed
on employers to employ a proportion of registered disabled persons. The quota was
originally fixed at 2 per cent, but was increased eighteen months later to 3 per cent.
Naturally, a large proportion of hospital staffs consists of nurses, and the nature of
their duties renders it essential that they should be physically fit. It was not therefore
without some difficulty that the prescribed quota was attained, the male domestic
staff providing a large proportion thereof.
Rates of pay
and conditions
of
service
During the period covered by this report, the extension of nationally agreed
rates of pay and conditions of service to cover many grades of hospital staff resulted
in the adoption by the Council of many new scales of salary and systems of grading.
In 1943, the recommendations of the Nurses' Salaries Committee and the
Midwives' Salaries Committee (the " Rushcliffe " Reports) for improved scales of
salary for nursing and midwifery staff were adopted and applied to the staff concerned
in the Council's hospitals, as were the various revisions and further recommendations
subsequently put forward from time to time by these committees.
In 1946, a similar step was taken on behalf of domestic staff at hospitals, when
the Council adopted the recommendation of the National Joint Council for Staff of
Hospitals and Allied Institutions (The "Mowbray" Report). The recommendations
included certain innovations for hospital domestic staff, for example, additional
payments for Sunday and bank holiday duty and for shift work and night work.
During the same year, most grades of medical auxiliary staff were brought on
to national scales of pay, agreed by the Joint Negotiating Committee (Hospital
Staffs). Grades included were pharmacists, physiotherapists, radiographers,
psychiatric social workers and speech and occupational therapists.
In July, 1946, the Council increased the salary scales of all its whole time medical
staff, in the light of the interim revision of the Askwith agreement agreed at a
conference at the Ministry of Health in March, 1946.
Towards the end of 1946, the Council reviewed the recruitment, grading and
scales of salary of stewards and clerical staff in the hospitals and adopted improved
salary scales.
The former system of having a separate hospital clerical service not integrated
with the general clerical service was reintroduced, and at the same time a general
widening of the field for recruitment to the grade of hospital clerk was agreed upon,
including provision for the admission into the grade of women up to 40 years of age
for work directly connected with patients, e.g., in medical superintendents' offices,
receiving wards, etc. For hospital clerks employed in the steward's offices the