COPY.
From Lady Piggott to Sir Matthew Nathan,
(5.)
THE HONGKONG BRANCH OF THE COLONIAL NURSING ASSOCIATION,
Your Excellency,
A general meeting of the original guarantors of, and the present subscribers to, the Hongkong Branch of The Colonial Nursing Association, will be held in the City Hall on Tuesday, 2nd November, 1909, at 5 P.M.
Your attendance is earnestly requested to consider a proposal which has been put before your Committee and accepted by them in principle, that the nurses, who are at present controlled by the Association, should be in future under the care of the Government and controlled by them.
The nurses would, in this case, live in a building attached to the Victoria Hospital on Barker Road, and be supervised by the Matron of that Hospital. If this scheme is carried out, the Hongkong Nursing Association, as such, will of course practically cease to exist.
The reasons which have led to this proposal are as follows:-
Under the present conditions the Association is able to exercise very little supervision over its nurses, and it is also difficult to arrange about their attendance at cases. The nurses have, since the Association was started, lived at the Peak Hospital, but they are there as boarders only, and are in no way subject to the authority of the Matron of that Hospital.
The control of the nurses has been entirely in the hands of your Secretary, guided, of course, by the Committee. The Secretary lives away from the nurses often at some distance, and it has been found practically impossible for her to exercise adequate supervision over them. For instance, a nurse may be called away direct from the