Nurse! Nurse!

Ten minutes from downtown Houston, in the vast, $60 million Texas Medical Center still abuilding, the M. D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute Stands out in a blush of pink marble. Just opened, it has 310 beds and everything that money can buy. But last week, only 98 beds were occupied and no more of the many waiting patients could be admitted. The main reason: shortage of nurses, which even a Texas oilman's millions cannot remedy. The hospital has 48 registered nurses and 66 aides; it needs more than twice as many, and where they will come from, nobody knows.

Most of Houston's other hospitals have a dozen to 100 beds lying empty for the same reason. The nurse shortage in Houston is more acute than in most of the nation because the booming city (pop. 700.000) is frantically building hospitals, but the difference is one of degree only. All over the U.S., nurses are in demand and the supply is short.

They Get Over It. "It would never occur to the average citizen that there might be some problem in getting him a nurse when he's sick," said a Houston hospital administrator. And this same citizen would likely ask: "What happens to all the little girls who want to be nurses when they grow up?" The answer is: plenty.

Most little girls get over the nursing craze about the time their brothers lose the yen to drive locomotives or airplanes. When they are old enough to go into nursing school, most of them are looking for something more glamorous. "There's no glamour in nursing," says a nursing chief in Houston. "The girls have to come into it with a spirit of dedication, and enjoy it because it's a tough job well done." One-third of all U.S. student nurses drop out without finishing the course, many of them because they find it too tough.

The 15-Year Career. Those who graduate are soon tempted to leave the hospitals that trained them. Industry pays better, and now employs 13,000 nurses (as against 3,000 ten years ago), but trains none. State and VA hospitals take thousands more. Many go to work in doctors' orifices. "They're draining the ranks and not putting any back," complains an administrator. "If they'd leave us alone, I'm sure we could turn out enough nurses to run our hospitals." Clearly, "they" will not leave the hospitals alone, and the only solution is to train more nurses. That will take money (to pay for teachers and quarters), some of which industry could supply and probably new nurse-training programs in Government hospitals.

Wherever she elects to work, the average nurse trained in Houston will stick at it for only 15 years. After 40, most will do only private-duty nursing. The chances are seven out of ten that she will get married and sooner or later quit work to mind her children. In Harris County (which includes Houston), only 109 nurses graduated in 1952. While some moved out of town, seven more moved in. But the county lost 111 by retirement, for a net gain of only five, while the number of hospital beds soared from around 3,000 to 4,000.

Houston is learning fast what the rest of the U.S. has been slower to realize: building more, bigger and better hospitals is not the same thing as providing more and better medical care. With all the step-saving gadgets and wider use of less-skilled personnel, nursing still takes nurses.

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