Remembering

The Nursing Aide School opened in Toorak in October 1950, with Burbidge as chair of its management committee.

The first school of its kind in Australia, it ‘represented a turning point in the history of the Australian nursing profession’⁶. Primarily for New Australian students, it offered classes in English as well simple nursing duties. Students lived onsite, before completing their training in an affiliated hospital.

By 1953, a further 15 nursing aide training institutions were operating around the state, but the original Melbourne school continued to lead the way. In 1962, for instance, the Hospitals and Charities Commission published Vera Jackson’s Handbook for Nursing Aides, which was based upon lectures given at the school. Two years later, copies were being used in all Australian states, as well as in New Zealand, the UK, Hong Kong and India.

The school’s students followed suit, advocating for better conditions in their work and more respect. They organised and participated in some of the first successful industrial action by nursing aides, seeking more equitable pay – in the 1960s, female nursing aides earned about $10 a week less than their male counterparts; and all were paid barely more than unskilled hospital workers – and called for changes to the curriculum to enable them to undertake more advanced duties.

Since the implementation of the Nurses’ Act 1956, the Victorian Nursing Council (formerly, the Nurses Board) had ultimate control over training, qualifications and registration of Victorian nurses and nursing aides, and was thus responsible for the state curriculum taught by the Melbourne Nursing Aide School.

By the late ‘60s this curriculum was creaky and in 1970 the report of the Committee of Enquiry into Nursing in Victoria echoed the students and recommended a more advanced programme of studies for nursing aides.

Among its reasons were that almost 90 per cent of nursing aides reported being required to administer medicines, despite the curriculum not preparing them for this. The fifth of the report’s seven main recommendations noted that ‘the current nursing aide training should be replaced as a matter of urgency by a more advanced programme of training and the title of those qualifying from the new course should be Enrolled Nurse.’⁷

In 1971, the Minister for Health announced an advanced training course, but a curriculum had yet to be devised. The Melbourne Nursing Aide School stepped up, convening an education advisory committee to draft a new curriculum, and provide recommendations to the Victorian Nursing Council. Unfortunately, it would take another two decades before the revised curriculum was officially implemented – much to students’ and the school’s frustration. Part of the delay was economic, with concerns that implementation of a new curriculum would necessitate extra staff, facilities and classroom time, and ultimately incite industrial action for increased wages.

There were some wins. The term Enrolled Nurse was finally adopted in 1981 and with it the school became the Melbourne School for Enrolled Nurses. But as the years wore on with no new curriculum in sight, it faced an uncertain financial future. A management consultant suggested it be merged with another training institution. In the background, investigations were ongoing to bring all state enrolled nurse training into the TAFE system.

Ultimately, it was the 1986 nurses and midwives strike that broke the stalemate. ‘On 12 December … the Minister for Health, David White, in a step which was seen by many people as provocative and controversial, took over the Victorian Nursing Council’s powers and extended the duties of state enrolled nurses in an attempt to break the strike.’⁸ The decision only lasted a day, but it lit a fire and a few months later the Health Department convened the Victorian Nursing Council, the Victorian Hospitals’ Association, RANF (Vic Branch), the AMA and others, and a pilot course – to be run by the Melbourne School for Enrolled Nurses – was planned for 1989, though ultimately was delayed until 1990.

The course was a success, but it couldn’t save the school. Falling enrolments continued to hamper the bottom line, and the push for enrolled nurse training via TAFE colleges – and ultimately the tertiary sector – continued. Cuts in health services funding didn’t help and then, in 1992 with the election of Jeff Kennett, the school’s fortunes were all but sealed. Just six weeks later, the Kennett Government closed the Melbourne School of Enrolled Nurses for good.

Having led the way in the history of enrolled nursing in Australia, Victoria today has the largest – and fastest growing – number of enrolled nurses in the country.

This is a legacy of the hard work and dedication of a number of active enrolled nurses, and their special interest group, who championed the importance of their role in the 1990s and 2000s. After the Kennett years, ANMF (Vic Branch) and enrolled nurses secured commitments from successive Victorian governments to expand enrolled nurse education opportunities.

In 2019, the Andrews Government made the diploma of nursing free at public TAFE as part of its plan to build a skilled workforce in priority areas. It also announced a $50 million nursing and midwifery workforce development fund that included additional transition to practice programs which will see four hundred new enrolled nurses employed between 2019 and 2023, once they successfully complete their free diploma.

The free education and enrolled nurse transition to practice programs will be particularly important to meet the new workforce care-minute mandates and skill mix in private aged care required from the yet-to-be written new federal aged care legislation and the aged care royal commission. It will be important we do not lose this pool of new enrolled nurses.

ANMF continues to campaign for the urgent implementation of improved staffing and skill mix inclusive of registered and enrolled nurses and personal care workers in private aged care.