Florence Nightingale

“ A Nurse is like a traveller, from the quantity of people who pass before her in the ever-changing wards. And she is like a traveller also in this, that, as Livingstone used to say, either the vices or the virtues of civilisation follow the footsteps of the traveller, and he cannot help it. So they do those of the Nurse. And missioning will be, whether she will or no, the background of her nursing, as it is the background of travelling. The traveller may call himself a missionary or not, as he likes. He is one, for good or for evil. ”

“ Oh, could God but say that He can trust this Home and Hospital because He can trust every woman in it! Let us try this—every woman to work as though success depended on herself. Do you know that, in this great Indian Famine, every Englishman has worked as if success depended on himself? And in saving a population as large as that of England from death by starvation, do you not think that we have achieved the greatest victory we ever won in India? Suppose we work thus for this Home and Hospital. ”

“ It has indeed been known that the Night Nurse had stayed in the kitchen to talk; but we may trust such things will not happen again.
And, for all, let us all say this word for ourselves: everything gets toppled over if we don’t make it a matter of conscience, a matter of reckoning between ourselves and our God. That is the only safeguard of real trustworthiness. If we treat it as a mere matter of business, of success in our career in life, never shall we give anything but eye-service, never shall we be really trustworthy. ”

“ Is it not to feel that we desire really nothing for ourselves in our Nursing life, present and future, but only this, “Thy will be done,” as we say in our daily prayer? Is it not to trust Him, that His will is really the best for each one of us? How much there is in those two words, His will—the will of Almighty Wisdom and Goodness, which always knows what is best for each one of us Nurses, which always wills what is best, which always can do what it wills for our best. ”

“ Also, a Hospital Nurse is in charge of people in their sick and feeble, anxious and dying hours, when they are singularly alive to impressions. She leaves her stamp upon them, whether she will or no. And this applies almost more to the Night Nurse than to the Day Nurse.
Lastly, if she have children-patients, she is absolutely in charge of these, who come, perhaps for the first and the last time of their lives, under influence.
So many pass by a child without notice. A whole life of happiness or wretchedness may turn upon an act of kindness to it—a good example set it. ”

“ What is God’s command to Night Nurses? It is—is it not?—not to slur over any duty—not the very least of all our duties—as Night Nurse: to be able to give a full, accurate, and minute account of each Patient the next morning: to be strictly reserved in your manner with gentlemen (“Thou God seest me”: no one else) ; to be honest and true. You don’t know how well the Patients know you, how accurately they judge you. You can do them no good unless they see that you live what you say. ”

“ Three cheers for these bravest of Night Nurses of Rorke’s Drift, who regarded not themselves, not their ease, not even their lives; who regarded duty and discipline; who stood to the last by God and their neighbour; who saved their post and their Patients. And may we Nurses all be like them, and fight through the night for our Patients’ lives—fight through every night and day!
Do you see what a high feeling of comradeship does for these men? Many a soldier loses his life in the field by going back to help a drowning or a wounded comrade, who might have saved it. ”

“ And I know that many of those who have gone out from among us, and who are now Hospital Sisters or Nurses—they would not like me to mention their names—do care for their Patients, Children and all, in all ways. Thank God for it!
When a Patient, especially a child, sees you acting in all things as if in the presence of God—and none are so quick to observe it—then the names he or she heard at the Chaplain’s or the Sister’s or the Night Nurse’s lips become names of real things and real Persons. There is a God, a Father; there is a Christ, a Comforter; there is a Spirit of Goodness, of Holiness ”

“ Do we think of God as the Eternal, into whose hands our patients, whom we see dying in the Wards, must resign their souls—into whose hands we must resign our own when we depart hence, and ought to resign our own as entirely every morning and night of our lives here; with whom do live the spirits of the just made perfect, with whom do really live, ought really as much to live, our spirits here, and who, in the hour of death, in the hour of life, both for our patients and ourselves, must be our trust and hope? ”

“ Does it not seem to you that the greater freedom of secular Nursing Institutions, as it requires (or ought to require) greater individual responsibility, greater self-command in each one, greater nobleness in each, greater self-possession in patience—so, that very need of self-possession, of greater nobleness in each, requires (or ought to require) greater thought in each, more discretion, and higher, not less, obedience? For the obedience of intelligence, not the obedience of slavery, is what we want. ”

“ And patients are so quick to see whether a Nurse is consistent always in herself—whether she is what she says to them. And if she is not, it is no use. If she is, of how much use, unawares to herself, may the simplest word of soothing, of comfort, or even of reproof—especially in the quiet night—be to the roughest patient, who is there from drink, or to the still innocent child, or to the anxious toil-worn mother or husband! ”

“ This night, if we are inclined to make a noise on the stairs, or to linger in each other’s rooms, shall we go quietly to bed, alone with God? Some of you yourselves have told me that you could get better day sleep in the Night Nurses’ Dormitory than in your own “Home.” Is there such loud laughing and boisterous talking in the daytime, going upstairs to your rooms, that it disturbs any one who is ill, or prevents those who have been on night duty from getting any sleep?
Is that doing what you would be done by—loving your neighbour as yourselves, as our Master told us? ”

“ Unable to control ourselves, therefore unable to control others? With many good qualities, perhaps, but owing to selfishness, conceit, to some want of purpose, some laxness, carelessness, lightness, vanity, some temper, habits of self-indulgence, or want of disinterestedness, unequal to the struggle of life, the business of life, and ill-adapted to the employment of Nursing, which we have chosen for ourselves, and which, almost above all others, requires earnest purpose, and the reverse of all these faults? ”

“ As one of you yourselves said: “She died like a good soldier of Jesus Christ, well to the front.” Would any one of us wish it otherwise for her? Would any one of us wish a better lot for herself? There is but one feeling among us all about her: that she lived as a noble Christian girl, and that she has been permitted to die nobly: in the post of honour, as a soldier thinks it glorious to die. In the midst of our work, so surely do we Nurses think it glorious to die. ”

“ Honour lies in loving perfection, consistency, and in working hard for it: in being ready to work patiently: ready to say not “How clever I am!” but “I am not yet worthy: but Nursing is worthy; and I will live to deserve and work to deserve to be called a Trained Nurse.” ”

“ Does the thought ever occur to us in the course of the day, that we will correct that particular fault of mind, or heart, or temper, whether slowness, or bustle, or want of accuracy or method, or harsh judgments, or want of loyalty to those under whom or among whom we are placed, or sharp talking, or tale-bearing or gossiping—oh, how common, and how old a fault, as old as Solomon! ”

“ This “I” must be quiet yet quick; quick without hurry; gentle without slowness, discreet without self-importance. “In quietness and in confidence must be her strength.”
I must be trustworthy, to carry out directions intelligently and perfectly, unseen as well as seen; “unto the Lord” as well as unto men; no mere eye service. (How can this be if she is a mere Association Nurse, and not an individual Nurse?)
I must have moral influence over my Patients. And I can only have this by being what I appear, especially now that everybody is educated, so that Patients become my keen critics and judges. ”

“ Must you not decide whether you will be missionaries for good, or whether for evil, among your patients and among yourselves?
And, first, among your patients:
Hospital Nurses have charge of their patients in a way that no other woman has charge; in the first place, no other woman is in charge really of grown-up men. Oh, how careful she ought to be, especially the Night Nurse, to show them what a true woman can be! The acts of a nurse are keenly scrutinised by both old and young patients. If she is not perfectly pure and upright, depend upon it, they know. ”

“ Will you be a missionary of good or of evil to your friend? Will you be a missionary of indifference, selfishness, lightness of conduct, self-indulgence? Or a missionary—to her and to your patients—of religious and noble devotion to duty, carried out to the smallest thing?
Will you be a “hero” in your daily work, like the dying child giving its hard-saved halfpence to the yet poorer child?
Livingstone always remembered that a poor old Scotchman on his death-bed had said to him: “Now, lad, make religion the every-day business of your life, not a thing of fits and starts ”

“ You are going steadily and devotedly on in preparing yourselves for future work. Accept my heartiest sympathy and thanks.
We hear much of “Associations” now. It is impossible indeed to live in isolation: we are dependent upon others for the supply of all our wants, and others upon us.
Every Hospital is an “Association” in itself. We of this School are an Association in the deepest sense, regulated—at least we strive towards it—on high and generous principles; through organisation working at once for our own and our fellow Nurses’ success. ”

“ And must not each of us be a Saviour, rather than a ruler: each in our poor measure? Did the Son of God try to rule? Oh, my friends, do not scold at women: they will be of another mind if they are “gently entreated” and learn to know you. Who can hate a woman who loves them? Or be jealous of one who has no jealousy? Who can squabble with one who never squabbles? It is example which converts your patients, your ward-maids, your fellow-Nurses or charges: it is example which converts the world. ”

“ She never nurses well till she ceases to command for the sake of commanding, or for her own sake at all: till she nurses only for the sakes of those who are nursed. This is the highest exercise of self-denial; but without it the ruin of the nursing, of the charge, is sure to come. ”

“ Is there a great deal of canvassing and misinterpreting Sisters and Matron and other authorities? every little saying and doing of theirs? talking among one another about the superiors (and then finding we were all wrong when we came to know them better) ?
We must all of us know, without being told, that we cannot be trained at all, if in training this will of our own is not kept under.
Do not question so much. Does not a spirit of criticism go with ignorance? Are some of you in all the “opposition of irresponsibility”? Some day, when you are yourselves responsible, you will know what I mean. ”

“ My every-day thought is—“How will God provide for the introduction of real Christianity among all of us Nurses, and among our Patients?” My every-day prayer (and I know that the prayer of many of you is the same) is that He will give us the means and show us how to use them, and give us the people. We ask you to pray for us, who have to arrange for you, as we pray for you, who have to nurse the Patients; and I know you do. The very vastness of the work raises one’s thoughts to God, as the only One by whom it can be done. ”

“ John have been thinking of us Nurses in our Training Schools when he said that?
May God be with us all and we be one in Him and in His work!
God speed us all!
Amen in our hearts.
I
These are some of the little things we need to attend to:
To be a Nurse is to be a Nurse: not to be a Nurse only when we are put to the work we like. If we can’t work when we are put to the work we don’t like—and Patients can’t always be fitted to Nurses—that is behaving like a spoilt child, like a naughty girl: not like a Nurse. ”

“ A woman possessed with the idea that she is making a sacrifice will never do; and a woman who thinks any kind of Nursing work “beneath a Nurse” will simply be in the way. But if the right woman is moved by God to come to us, what a welcome we will give her, and how happy she will soon be in a work, the many blessings of which none can know as we know them, though we know the worries too! (Good Bishop Patteson used to talk to his assistants something in this way; would we were like him!)
Nurses’ work means downright work, in a cheery, happy, hopeful, friendly spirit. ”

“ Mere worldly success to any nobler, higher mind is not worth having. Do you think Agnes Jones, or some who are now living amongst us, cared much about worldly success? They cared about efficiency, thoroughness. But that is a different thing.
We must condemn many of our own tempers when we calmly review them. We must lament over training opportunities which we have lost, must desire to become better women, better Nurses. That we all of us must feel. And then, and not till then, will life and work among the sick become a prayer. ”

“ And let us remember that petty selfishnesses and meannesses and self-indulgences hinder our honour as good soldiers of Jesus Christ and of the Unseen God, who sees all these little things when no one else does!
What makes us endure to the end? Discipline. Do you think these men could thus have fought at a desperate post through the livelong night if they had not been trained to obedience to orders, and to acting as a corps, yet each man doing his own duty to the fullest extent—rather than every man going his own way, thinking of his own likings, and caring for himself? ”