Government House to host nurses

18/11/2010

Celebrations to mark the 2010 International Year of the Nurse and 117 years of nursing in Fiji will be launched at Government House tomorrow.

Hosted by the First Lady Adi Koila Nailatikau, the launch precedes a march scheduled for Saturday November 21, a gathering for nursing staff retirees at Sukuna Park and a celebration service at the World Harvest Centre on Sunday.

The 2010 International Year of the Nurse (IYNurse) is the centennial year of the death of the founder of modern nursing - Florence Nightingale <http://www.2010iynurse.net/Florence_Nightingale.aspx> (1820-1910).
Nursing, as a profession in Fiji, first began in Levuka in 1882 where the first hospital was built and was performed by untrained European ladies under a doctor’s supervision.

With the construction of the 70 beds Colonial Hospital at Walu Bay in 1894, nursing was carried out by long term prisoners who were supervised by an untrained matron.

Ten years later, Fiji’s first qualified nurse – Ms Frances Webster Wedderburn who was professionally trained in England at the Nightingale School by Florence Nightingale – arrived.

Fiji School of Medicine Events Coordinator Peter Sipeli said at the Florence Nightingale Museum, London, Fiji is noted on the world map as the only country in the Pacific, besides New Zealand, where Nightingale had sent nurses to.
Ms Webster trained local European girls in 1897 and the first qualified staff nurse, Miss May Anderson graduated after three years of training.

High mortality rates of Fijian babies and infants – totaling 4,258 in 1901 prompted the training of local nurses the first six of which were Vetinia Buadromo [Lau], Taina Nakauta [Ba], Arieta Vakabuna [Ba], Makereta Marama [Tailevu], Elena [Rewa] and Lice [Tailevu].

More nurses were trained and sent to the outlying islands.

The establishment of the Central Nursing School that trained nurses from 1954 to 1986 and its subsequent upgrade to the Fiji School of Nursing marks the leaps nursing education has made in Fiji.

Fiji became a pace setter for nursing education in the South Pacific accepting regional students.

Statistics show that in 100 years of nursing and nursing education from 1882- 1992, a total of 2,720 nurses had graduated from Tamavua, 302 midwives in the local program and the current Nurses Registers has a record of more than 3,000 registrants.

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