Educational Alternatives, Volume 23, 2025

Rezumat: The primary problem of the Czechoslovak healthcare system after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was the insufficient qualification of nurses, which was closely related to the small number of nurses relative to the number of patients. Despite the founding of several nursing schools, the number of qualified nurses remained insufficient. In the interwar period (1918 – 1938) and also during and after the Second World War, ever more categories of nursing personnel worked in hospitals and medical facilities in Slovakia. Because of the lack of professionally qualified nurses, hospitals independently organised educational nursing courses for nursing staff. These nursing courses were organised in the Czechoslovak Republic as early as 1930 in the state hospitals in Bratislava, Košice, Žilina, Mukachevo, in the general hospital in Prague and in the state Šrobárov Children’s Institute in Smokovec. Aside from the Ministry of Public Health and Physical Education, such nursing courses were also organised by several associations, such as the Czechoslovak Red Cross, the American Red Cross, the Czechoslovak Mother and Child Protection, as well as nursing schools themselves. The issue of organising courses in order to reduce the shortage of nursing personnel lasted in Czechoslovakia until the end of the 1950s. These nursing courses initially had their justification, as they provided education in a short time mainly to nurses who had already proven themselves in nursing practice. However, the courses were repeatedly assessed critically as providing insufficient education for obtaining a position as a qualified registered nurse, and their content should not have been recognised as equivalent to a nursing school education.