Nurse's Hazards

Nurses' Hazards

If nurses or doctors contract tuberculosis from their patients, that, in the eye of New York State's law, is their bad luck. This attitude reflects the fact that practically all human beings are infected at some time in their lives by the germs of tuberculosis; if the disease explodes in a nurse while she works in a special tuberculosis hospital, it is an accident of life, not an occupational damage.

The New York State Industrial Board last week set aside this attitude by heeding the plea of a tuberculous nurse and granting her $267 for three and a half months as the wages of invalidism.

That compensation for invalidism may have its drawbacks was suggested by 139 nurses of Los Angeles last week. They had contracted infantile paralysis nursing in the 1935 epidemic. They had been awarded $40 to $90 a month as compensation. In California such income sets them apart from the horde of indigents and makes them ineligible for free medical care. Unable to pay for both living and medical expenses, the 139 crippled nurses asked a Los Angeles grand jury for help. Powerless to do anything more concrete, the grand jury amplified and echoed the appeal in hopes of getting California or Federal dollars rolling toward the cripples' wheelchairs.

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