RAZVOJ PRIMALJSKOG ŠKOLSTVA U RIJECI

Abstract

The oldest records of midwife education in Rijeka date back to the first half of the 18 th century. To receive a license, a midwife had to pass exams in Italian in Trieste, that is, until the Council of the Town of Rijeka, which boasted a number of fine physicians, requested and received the right to conduct exams at home. Followed the establishment of the first Croatian Midwifery School in Rijeka in 1786. In 1795, Dr Ivan Carobbi wrote an excellent textbook for midwives in Croatian, which had the misfortune never to be published. From 1858, nuns of the order of St. Vincent de Paul nursed the sick and the poor of Rijeka, and from 1937 to 1947 established and ran a nursing school. In 1946, Dr Viktor Finderle started a boarding Midwifery School within the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of the Rijeka General Hospital. At first the programme lasted two years; in 1958 it was extended to three, and in 1964 to a four-year pro- gramme. In 1974 the school was replaced by a newly formed Health Centre of Rijeka which included all secondary schools in the town’s area. The Centre merged with the Grammar School of Sušak in 1978 and became the Centre “Mirko Lenac” for educa- tion of a number of medical professions. All students shared the same programme in the first two-year term, and then choose their majors for the second two-year term. Until 1982 classes were held in the Midwifery School building, only to move to the Nursing School, and in 1987 to the building of the former Grammar School in Sušak. Since the 1992 school reform, this school has accommodated the First Sušak Grammar School and the (secondary) School of Medicine.