Three-Shift Nursing

An effort to give graduate nurses shorter work days with increased pay and yet seem to reduce nursing charges to patients last week showed headway throughout the nation. Nineteen hospitals in seven States were trying out the scheme. Private nurses now normally get $6 for a twelve-hour tour of duty in a hospital ($8 in homes), or 50-c- an hour. In addition in many hospitals the patient pays a variable amount for his nurse's meals. The experimenting hospitals have put their nurses on three eight-hour shifts a day. One of them pays $5 a shift, or 62 1/2-c-an hour. Patients who must have 24-hour attention pay $15 (instead of $12) a day, plus 75f-c-for each meal the nurses consume. For hospital patients who require no more than 16 hours of continuous private nursing, the new arrangement brings the nursing charge down to $10 a day.

Primary urge for the eight-hour nursing shift is the inestimable desperate need for spreading employment among nurses.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.