August 7, 1943 NEWSREEL: The Service Needs More Nurses

ALTHOUGH more than 35,000 nurses are now serving with the Army or Navy, the need is by no means satisfied. During the next year it is estimated that something like 30,000 additional nurses will be required. Including 35,000 students now in training, the number of nurses available for service with the Army or Navy is estimated at about 195,000. In recent months the rate of enlistments has fallen off, and the Army and Navy Nurse Corps is making an effort to convince more nurses that their first duty in this emergency is to serve the sick and wounded among our fighting men. The article by Pete Martin in the Post for July thirty-first must have convinced a good many American young women that the life of an Army nurse, while bard and exacting, is by no means barren of romance and adventure. Of course, this need puts a new strain upon civilian hospital staffs, already on desperately short rations, and the call for girls to study nursing and for women to take Red Cross courses in home nursing or to qualify as nurses”™ aides is increasingly urgent. The Post is glad to add its endorsement to the appeal of the services and the Red Gross for an increasingly large number of women with the necessary age and educational qualifications to contribute their skill and patriotic endeavor to meet the crisis in the care of sick soldiers and sailors and of the civilians who are left behind.