VPRS 16922 Nurse Record Cards

Full description

Nursing Personnel Cards acted as the personnel record for each nurse and relate to trainee Nurses and trainee Nurses' Aides who either completed some of their training, their full training, or were employed by RCH. A summary of information about each nurse or trainee contained on the cards includes demographical information, dates each year of training was commenced, ward or department worked, leave taken, examination results, and and ward reports about the nurse's or trainee's performance.

Cards are either green or yellow and are intermixed. While the majority of the cards are green, there are a handful of yellow cards which were used for 'affiliated nurses'. These have different information from the green cards. The yellow cards have a computer printout titled 'student nurse report'. Information included on the yellow cards includes seniority, employee number, weeks in location, location, date commenced, summary (handwritten), registered nurse signature, student nurse signature.

Green cards are folded in a manner which suggests that they were stored in a flat file (most likely a flat tray, visible edge card file) with the name of the trainee nurse at the bottom of the card. Information on these cards includes the name and relationship of next of kin, home and local address at the top section of card and a photograph (on right hand side). Column 1 has the date of birth, standard of education, nursing bursary, religion. Column 2 has the date of entry into each year level. Column 3 has the date passed examinations, nursing appointments made and when left from Royal Children's Hospital.

The training history is inside the folded card. Cards are divided into rows and columns with the training history recorded. This section records the ward and specialty work experience, including external placements. The information is arranged in blocks with multiple columns, indicating the dates that the trainee nurse attended each area. Sick leave, holidays and examination results are included in this section. Each pair of columns has a heading indicating the ward or department of allocation.

Numbers are written in some columns. These numbers may be dates as none of the numbers go above 31. Some of these numbers are written in red. Numbers in the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) column have a bracket joining them together and pointing to the information in the Outpatients column. In some instances abbreviations are used and in other instances the following has been written: M/M (male medical), F/M (female medical), M/S (male surgical), F/S (female surgical). Numbers next to this information refer to a number of days. This is possibly days in these types of wards, but probably not the number of days at RMH.

Nurses were required to attend various other hospitals (perhaps instead of RMH?), e.g. Prince Henry Hospital from ?1972, Mercy Maternity Hospital from ?1978, Royal District Nursing Service from ?1972, St Vincent's Hospital from ?1973. Information in the column headed 'examinations' is typed. Exams were for the following subjects (the year in brackets refers to exams that were added in later years). Preliminary School, Anatomy and Physiology, Junior General Nursing (results are divided into 'w' and 'p' - meaning 'ward work' and 'practice' in 1967), Paediatrics,First Professional, Senior General Nursing (results are divided into 't' and 'p', this changes to 'w' and 'p' in c. 1967), Dietetics, Medical, Surgical, Materia Medica, Gynaecology, Ophthalmic, Ear, Nose, Throat, Snr Paediatrics, State Final, Nutrition (c. 1963), Research (c. 1968), General Nursing and Related Sciences (1973), Normal Nutrition (1973), General Science (1973), Psych (1973), Microbiology (1977), Infectious (1964).

The results column is handwritten as a number, percentage, 'aver[age]', or 'pass'. In 1975 some subjects are given a letter grade instead of a percentage. The back of the card is labelled 'training record (continued)'. Under this is a section titled 'summary of reports'. The information is typed and pertains to how the nurse performed during their time on each ward or department, and always includes a short typed overall summary of the personality of the nurse and their suitability for their chosen profession. The summary report always includes all of the wards or departments, even if the nurse did not work in all of the areas. Some of the ward or department names are written in red. These names correspond to numbers written in red on the training record. (More research is required).

Information on the inside of card includes, number of sick leave days (recorded in the summary section from? 1997), prizes awarded to a nurse (written in red on the front of the card), personal opinions from the nurses revealing his/her attitude to nursing (written in pencil and dated). There are also handwritten notes such as 'NO' or 'ND' (some have a number next to this, e.g. '6/52 after Jan'). These notes relate to when a nurse was able to do night duty and how long the night duty was for. There are other numbers written in red pen on the left of the card (e.g. GS 778 1781) these relate to the nurse's student number with the Victorian Nursing Council.

Extra notes about the individual trainee are stored with the relevant card e.g. correspondence received after completion of training, reports of serious problems or issues, suspensions for a serious breach of rules, extra information relating to the 'summary of reports'. A photo (where present) of the trainee is attached with what appears to be a water based glue to the card. In most of the photos the trainee is not in uniform, suggesting that the photos were perhaps provided by the individual.

On all cards the field 'date of entry' on front of card has the same date as the field 'entered' which is located on the inside of the card. Photos are mostly black and white. In 1968 & 1969 some photographs were taken in colour.

Next of kin, nurse address and phone number is written in pencil. All other details are written in pen. From the 1970s some personal details are typed (some straight onto the cards and others are typed onto labels). The Matron's Summary records what the nurse will do after training is completed (e.g. return to staff after leave, marriage on completion of training). The summary also records major illnesses.
There are a small number of cards where the photograph is not extant. It is unknown why a red 'post it note' flag is on a small number of records (in boxes 1-5). Each card is initialled by the relevant Matron at the time.

Depending on how a trainee was progressing (in relation to performance, ability or situation) they could move up or down to different groups. They could discontinue their nursing training, do Nurse's Aide training, and then re-commence their nursing training in a different group.

Abbreviations include:
T = theory, P = practice, C/T = completion of training, PTS = preliminary training
School

Prior to transfer to Public Record Office Victoria, the records in this series were maintained as part of the Royal Children's Hospital (RCH) Archives. They were part of RCH accession number 2011/006.