MAYOR TO SIGN NURSES’ AIDES PROCLAMATION Women Requested to Join Vital Organization To Help Nation A proclamation designating this week as "Nurse's Aides Enrollment week" was in preparation Saturday for Mayor Peery's signature Mon¬day morning. The week, a national observance, is for the purpose of organizing training units of women for nurse's aides—the Red Cross activity which is providing thousands of especial¬ly trained women to fill the vital need to relieve overworked regis¬tered nurses. Mayor Peery's proclamation will point out that every adult and many children of the nation must put forth a hitherto untouched amount of effort to achieve victory in this war and also point out that the need for additional trained help | in the medical field is constantly growing. "I request that all women, not actively engaged in some form of I war work, give careful consideration to enrollment in this vital or¬ganization as a means of giving protection to their community and to their own homes," the mayor said. Next Course The next course of training for nurse's aides will start Oct. 1, at Dee hospital, it was announced by Mrs. L. G. Diehl, chairman of nurse's aides for Weber county Red Cross chapter. During enrollment week, Mrs. Diehl and Mrs. Sophie Reed, newly appointed enrollment chairman, will take applications in the Red Cross rooms on the first floor of the city- county building between ten a. m. and four p. m. Women desirous of taking the six-week, three-hour daily course which qualifies them as nurse's aides must be under 50 years of age, must be able to devote 150 hours per year for four years to the training center, must be on call in any emergency, and must be willing to complete the course once they have started it. For Persistency "We realize many women are zealous in their desire to do some¬thing to help the nation over this critical period," said Mrs. Diehl, "but we must be certain that our effort is not wasted. It would be of little value for us to train a woman for three weeks, then have her drop out because of some other interest which calls her first. We must limit enrollment and we want finishers, rather than starters. "Women who become nurse's aides are definitely in this war as much as registered nurses who are serving with front line troops and on naval vessels. Their acceptance of the work of aides releases more and more of the fully trained ; nurses for active duty with the troops. It also gives a bit of re¬spite to those nurses who are over¬worked here at home because of the shortage of trained nurses." The appeal for student nurse's aides is directed this year to those women who have the time and in-clination to work but who are not already actively engaged in war work—either as volunteers in some other service or as employes of one of the adjacent military bases. Director Named Mrs. O. C. Hammond, R. N., will again instruct the course, as she did those which were completed last year, providing the city with 60 trained nurse's aides. The num¬ber is about one-third of the imme¬diate need, according to medical and hospital authorities. "Never before in Ogden's history has the condition of the city's health been so critical because of shortage of trained assistance," said a statement. "Every month nurses are leaving our hospital for government service. The number of incoming students in the nurs¬ing school grows smaller as each class is organized. To make the situation even more critical, the population is growing way out of proportion to the pace at which protection is offered. "Nurse's aides do no nursing. Their job is that of assistant to the nurses. They cannot take the time to be fully trained in the pro¬fession, so they are trained to take the less technical tasks off the shoulders of the pitifully small corps of qualified women." Termed Not Long The training course is not long, Mrs. Diehl pointed out, and the number of hours per day required for the training is negligible. A certain amount of determination with which to leaven the normal amount of patriotism is all that's needed to make a good nurse's aide, she concluded. Support of the medical profes¬sion for the program is whole- hearted in this area. The doctors have time and again been called upon to work where the shortage of nurses has been relieved to a certain extent by nurse's aides who, by taking the non-professional tasks from the shoulders of the nurses, have given the doctors the strongest possible support. "The spirit of the 60 nurse's aides we now have, if multiplied by the training of another hundred or more of such women, will make it much easier for our medical men and nurses to perform the added tasks that a greater population and a shortage of trained men and women, due to calls to government service, have given us," said one doctor. "With half our doctors and more than half our nurses that we had when the population was at 43,000 now on government duty, and our population approximately dou¬ble that, we are finding it almost impossible to perform all that we are called upon to do." Mayor Peery said Saturday he would give his full support to any program which will relieve the almost dangerous conditions that exist here today because of the rea¬sons pointed out by the doctor. SEPTEMBER 20, 1942 To Instruct Nurses’ Aides Mrs. O. C. Hammond, registered nurse, is instructor for the Red Cross nurses’ aide classes again this year. The membership drive for this organization is now on.