School of Nursing, Scudder Memorial Hospital, Ranipet

The School of Nursing at Ranipet is over 80 years old. It owes its original foundation to the Scudder family from America who continue to take an interest in it.

Every year thousands of girls (and some boys) from Christian families apply for a place at the School of Nursing at Ranipet. It is a difficult time for the administrators who have to sift the applications and choose just one hundred students a year. Because the school serves the whole of the Diocese of Vellore they have to apply very strict rules: they must make sure that they choose an equal number of steudents frome each of the four areas of the Diocese; then they need to make sure that they have at least eight students who are boys, and finally that two of the students they have accepted are non-Christians. This means that the students who get on to the course (who are usually 17 years old) are very clever and dedicated.

Nursing training is made up of a balance of theory and practice. During the period of training nursing students are given practical instruction by senior ward staff. Their work is organized and supervised by nurse-tutors. They also attend lectures by specialists in various fields of medicine and some days may be totally given to study and lectures on various aspects of medicine and nursing. During the training period nurses are moved around all hospital departments, gradually being given more and more responsible jobs to do.

Ranipet Hospital is chiefly a maternity hospital, so during the two year training course the students have to attend a number of normal births and difficult births. In fact, most of the local babies which are born normally are born at home, so the nursing students actually see more difficult births! In the photographs above the nurses are caring for two premature baby boys. Many of the children born in the villages around Ranipet will be premature, and child are often born with problems such as deafness. Many of these problems with the babies are caused by poor young mothers having to work in the fields until hours before the baby is born. Sometimes the problems will be caused by cousins marrying which can be common in isolated Indian villages.

The hospital also has facilities for surgery, eye clinics and accident and emergency department.

A Cambridgeshire visitor to the School of Nursing wrote about Ranipet:

"During our visit to Vellore I taught English to 2nd year nursing students in the Scudder Memorial Hospital in Ranipet, about 30 miles from Vellore. The students’ reading skills and vocabulary were good so we concentrated on improving oral communication. The students were highly motivated and extremely hard-working. Theirs is a long day of seven full hours of lectures, two hours of homework, two half-hours of worship and their only relaxation is the meal breaks and an hour and a half of free time in the hostel. Formal lectures increasingly give way to work on the wards. They are not allowed to watch TV, go to the cinema or go shopping. However, they were such fun, and loved the activities I had prepared and in particular singing the songs I taught them. “Rise and shine” (with actions) was top of the pops! One evening they put on a programme of Indian dances for our benefit. Christian worship was at the heart of their work, and they attended chapel every morning and church on Sunday. Most moving of all was the evening prayer. They assembled quietly half an hour beforehand, sitting in the dusk on the floor in their saris, and sang unaccompanied all their favourite hymns in English and Tamil. "

The School of Nursing has a very good reputation and its students have even come first in the General Nursing and Midwifery examinations for the whole of South India.

Nursing students enjoying Christian worship together: