The changes were a clear indication of future changes to come and the first official indication to the SPNA that the training of psychiatric nurses in a core program with general nurses might become a reality sooner rather than later.

The second indication was the result of deliberations of a provincial Ad Hoc Committee on Nursing Education established on July 9, 1965 by the Minister of Public Health, D. G. Steuart. The Committee's purpose was to study existing systems of nursing education in Saskatchewan and to provide recommendations designed to meet future nursing needs. It was, for example, to study the relationship between hospital schools of nursing and other institutions which trained nurses for various purposes.⁷⁹

Upon beginning its work, the new committee indicated that it was fully prepared to accept briefs from interested parties. The SPNA, SRNA and the Psychiatric Services Branch all submitted briefs. The SPNA's brief outlined three problems related to the current psychiatric nursing training and offered recommendations related to each:

1. Problem ' The recent trend to community psychiatric nursing necessitates a revision of our curriculum so that psychiatric nurses will be adequately prepared to function as 'community centered' psychiatric nurse. Recommendations: a) the SPNA curriculum hours in social sciences should be increased; b) the student psychiatric nurse should become sufficiently acquainted with community resources, official organizations and private agencies to be able to give maximum help to patients and their families; and, c) more education in casework should be included in the student's preparation.
2. Problem ' At present, student psychiatric nurses from the three training centers do not receive clinical education affiliation. Recommendation: Establish an affiliation program among the three training centers immediately.
3. Problem ' The SPNA feels that in order to serve this province to our fullest potential, we must have more progressive and directive leadership. Recommendation: For this, there must be available to psychiatric nurses, education beyond the Diploma course level and we suggest a degree program be established at the University of Saskatchewan.

The Psychiatric Services Branch's brief to the Committee, stated that

Knowledge of mental health concepts would benefit all branches of nursing and . . . this point should be considered when planning for nursing education in the future. We should no longer think of psychiatric nursing as a separate function but should work toward a core curriculum common to both. The core curriculum should provide for more efficient utilization of nursing personnel at the diploma level with convenient avenues to registration in the various specialties. In this era of rapid social change, increasing urbanization and population shift, it seems important that the professional nurses have the capacity for mobility.⁸¹

The SRNA also favored common training. It stated that the minimum curriculum for the preparation of registered nurses and psychiatric nurses should be amalgamated to produce a well-prepared practitioner.⁸² When the SRNA presented the final draft of its submission to the Ad Hoc Committee on Nursing Education, it asserted

'that when the two year diploma course is established, the program for the preparation of psychiatric nurses should be discontinued.'⁸³

When the SPNA learned of this recommendation, it issued an immediate response, published in The Psychiatric Nurse.

Such recommendations by supposedly responsible persons are distressing'where do they get off at recommending that PN's should give up their profession and become RN's any more than we should recommend that RN's should give up their profession and take an extra year to become PN's. 'It is incredible that, when it is they who want to practice our type of nursing, that they, rather than seek out extra training for themselves, advocate the discontinuance of our education and our profession.⁸⁴

More distressing yet was the interim report submitted by the Ad Hoc Committee on Nursing Education on January 11, 1966. It concluded:

In regard to the maintenance of a separate educational stream for psychiatric nurses this Committee tends to think that, if a high quality diploma nursing education program were to be implemented, if greater education were given to psychiatric nursing in the diploma curriculum, and if more students could be attracted into the diploma nursing education program, it would then seem unnecessary to sustain a separate psychiatric nurse education program. There is reason to believe that this merging might be reasonably accomplished in a few years. It is suggested that the Board of Nursing Education [which the Ad Hoc Committee on Nursing Education became] review this situation each year until a firm decision can be taken.⁸⁵

The SRNA brief, coupled with the recommendation of the Ad Hoc Committee, caused the SPNA great consternation. What spurred the psychiatric nurses into immediate action however, was the information and the challenge which Dr. Fred Grunberg, Director, Psychiatric Services Branch presented to them, at an SPNA Council meeting in October 1966. He predicted that by 1971, the Weyburn hospital would be used for purposes other than hospitalizing the mentally ill. It had been recommended that a Yorkton-type psychiatric centre be built in its place. He believed that the North Battleford hospital would follow the same course, and that a psychiatric centre would be built there as well.

In response to the SPNA's concern about job security, he predicted that Saskatchewan would need more trained personnel, not fewer, simply because there would be many more community agencies needing staff. 'The problem appears to be one of job dislocation. The psychiatric nurse must be prepared to move, relocate.'

Further, he advised the group to maintain a unique identity, apart from the general nurse and traditional nursing model, as this would surely lead to the amalgamation of the two programs. To retain their own identity, he advised, psychiatric nurses would have to develop a new curriculum based on a new philosophy.

Think of yourselves as a Mental Health Worker as opposed to a nurse. Psychiatric nurses moving into nursing homes and other such facilities do so as specialists to fill specific needs. They do not or should not move into these facilities as a general nurse. The term 'nurse' no longer describes the function of this type of person. The curriculum should determine if you are specialists in the behavioral sciences, or a nurse in the traditional sense.⁸⁶