Rebecca Nurse

“ The nurse must always be absolutely obedient to the physician, and she must carry out his directions to the letter, and neither add to nor deduct from his treatment. It is not only the good nurse who is obedient. A woman who departs from the mandates of the physician is an encumbrance—nay, more than an encumbrance—she is distinctly detrimental to the health of the patient. ”

“ And we are of opinion that in most cases of sickness the best nurse for an invalid is his nearest female relative.
People think that physicians always advise a certified nurse and object to a patient’s wife or sister turning amateur nurse for the time being. We can assure you that this is not the case. Of course, it is an advantage to the physician if he can have a nurse whom he knows to look after his case; but, as a general rule, he is indifferent in the matter, except in some diseases, when the aid of a person skilled in nursing those suffering from that disease is indispensable. ”

“ You have a very great advantage over trained nurses in that, as you are related to the invalid, you can cheer him, you can read to him, and generally comfort him.
We have nothing to say against trained nurses. In some diseases the help of a woman skilled in nursing is essential. What we want to do is to impress upon every woman the fact that it may become her duty to nurse her relative or friend, and that, if she will put her whole mind into the work, she will be as competent to nurse invalids through most diseases as are her specially skilled sisters. ”

“ Rachel Jones here is the best nurse in the world. Old Elsie Bell is a witch and an ignoramus, and knows no more about nursing than she does about Greek; and she would poison you with some quack weed or another. I never trust these old women, that ramble about among the woods. And then, sir, what makes you think she will come to you? Why, sir, it is notorious, she never comes nigh the Folly ”

“ A patient who cannot touch his dinner at two, will often accept it gladly, if brought to him at seven. But somehow nurses never "think of these things." One would imagine they did not consider themselves bound to exercise their judgment; they leave it to the patient. Now I am quite sure that it is better for a patient rather to suffer these neglects than to try to teach his nurse to nurse him, if she does not know how. It ruffles him, and if he is ill he is in no condition to teach, especially upon himself. The above remarks apply much more to private nursing than to hospitals. ”

“ In overcoming this prejudice, a great deal depends upon the character of the institution itself. It is not enough to establish hospitals:—they must be attractive and comfortable to such a degree that they become highly desirable to prospective patients. They must be well run, well managed, the food must be good, and the patients well treated. To obtain segregation, we must have hospitals which offer great advantages over the home.
Home Care of the Advanced Case. If there are no hospital facilities, it then becomes the nurse’s duty to give nursing care to the bed-ridden patient. ”

“ So, also, the presence of certain diseases forbids wet-nursing. Thus it is ordinarily prohibited by consumption, scrofula, skin affections of long standing, and cancer. In consumption, all efforts to suckle are frequently equally fatal to the mother and child. Even a strong hereditary predisposition to this disease may render it advisable, in the opinion of the family physician,—who should always be consulted in such a case,—to counteract the family taint by giving the milk of the healthiest nurse that can be procured. The condition of the nipples and of the breast may not permit of nursing. ”

“ Every one can help—every one—better than if she were a “newspaper,” better than if she were a “public meeting.” I believe that within a few years you can make it a thing that will be a disgrace to any Hospital or even Workhouse to be suspected of bad Nursing, or to any district (in towns, at any rate) not to have a good District Nurse to nurse the sick poor at home. ”

“ They walked into the ward and Miss Kerr observed, “Two vacant beds. Oh, yes, that patient in 21 went home, didn’t she? Put Miss Standish in that bed.”
Miss Standish looked upset. Trained nurses haven’t much use for a member of their profession who has the chicken-heartedness to succumb to physical ailments. And Miss Kerr’s manner plainly 134 said so. But Rose Standish had not been head nurse in the accident room three years without being able to think quickly. ”

“ He said, "I have no hesitation in saying that the saving would be certain and great."
The Assistant Physician Accoucheur, who has until last week had charge of the medical patients here, as House Physician (Mr. H. L. Kempthorne) , says, "The value of trained efficient nursing cannot be overrated in the management of acute diseases, and especially fevers, and would speak for itself in the saving of life, humanly speaking.
"In chronic cases, the eye of the trained nurse would soon detect the malingerer, and thus save the parish the expense of maintaining one who could well keep himself. ”

“ Now as to the cleaning of these rooms. Head Nurses generally are far too much disposed to make servants of their nurses; put orderlies for nurses, and this objectionable tendency would be a hundred-fold more objectionable. The Matron must make it an absolute rule, that the only thing an orderly does for a nurse is to carry her box in and out on the two grand occasions of her entering and leaving the Hospital. ”

“ I would not, however, expressly exempt the patients from being made useful in nursing the sick. A lazy or ill-conditioned patient might make it a handle to refuse to do or grumble at doing things which he ought to do, such as (a thing frequently required) giving and emptying a bed-pan to an ordinary patient who cannot leave his bed, while the Nurse and Orderlies are doing other things in the ward; assisting to move a helpless patient, if all the Orderlies are not at hand; sometimes watching or attending for an hour or so a critical case, &c., &c., &c. ”

“ Having attained the position of staff nurse at the London Hospital, she engaged in poor law nursing, serving in the Highgate and Shoreditch infirmaries. Subsequently she took temporary charge of a Queen’s district nursery in Manchester. In 1906 she went to Brussels to co-operate with Dr. Depage in establishing a modern training school for nurses on the English system, the best nurses hitherto obtainable in Belgium having been sisters belonging to Catholic religious orders. ”

“ Next week she was to take her turn at night-nursing. She was getting on well, and, notwithstanding the small cloud which now existed between her and Sister Kate, Sister Kate knew Effie's value. There are nurses and nurses. Many girls who go as probationers to the great hospitals are thoroughly unsuited to the life; their qualifications are not those essential to the good nurse; they are destitute of tact, of presence of mind, of that tenderness which can be firm as well as gentle. But Effie was an ideal nurse ”

“ Give them two hours for optional exercise. Head-Nurses cannot have more of fixed leisure. They must get time for private occupation as they can: very often not at all; and no Nurse fit for her place will, of course, in emergent states of her ward, leave it. Also the Matron must not worry herself or them, if an anxious Nurse sits up part of a night or a whole night with bad cases. ”

“ Time, strength, and this modicum of comfort, enter much into a Nurse’s health—and health is essential both for efficiency and economy.
Where the Nurse sleeps at a distance from her ward, her efficiency, both as to superintendence and work, especially at night, in dangerous cases, is seriously impaired.
If she sleeps at a distance from her ward, her comfort, also, such as it is, is destroyed. Whatever a Nurse does for herself, she must do by fits and starts. ”

“ But on a bed or sofa, he is entirely at your mercy, and he feels every jar you give him all through him.
Difference between real and fancy patients.
In all that we have said, both here and elsewhere, let it be distinctly understood that we are not speaking of hypochondriacs. To distinguish between real and fancied disease forms an important branch of the education of a nurse. To manage fancy patients forms an important branch of her duties. But the nursing which real and that which fancied patients require is of different, or rather of opposite, character. ”

“ No one condemns reasonable pleasures, and in no other work is relaxation and recreation so much required, but one must be careful not to burn the candle at both ends. It is no part of the superintendent’s duties to regulate the life of her nurses outside of working hours, but when their life off duty diminishes their working ability, she is then called upon to interfere. Tuberculosis work is trying, serious, and difficult, and demands a high degree of mental and physical strength and freshness. If a nurse is not willing to give this, she should not undertake public health work. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Herschel’s argument which is, that nursing is neither an order, a trade, nor a means of earning a livelihood; but that it must ultimate in a profession filled almost exclusively by women. Our American hospitals, though second only to those of England in point of equipment for the training of nurses, are still imperfect. From a small beginning actuated by humane motives, of necessity, nursing has assumed vast proportions. Like all other avenues of human activity, the bad crops out with the good and many a conscientious nurse suffers for the261 sins of one who has crept in. ”

“ There were not wanting women who bore the title of professional nurse, but these did not have the training to justify the name. Before the Crimean War there were upward of two thousand five hundred such nurses in England. Florence Nightingale, whose name will ever be identified with the founding of schools for nurses, said: "Sickness is everywhere. Death is everywhere. But hardly anywhere is the training necessary to relieve sickness, to delay death. We consider a long education and discipline necessary to train our medical man ”

“ District Nursing Care of the sick in hospitals, as everyone knows, depends almost as much upon efficient nursing as upon the skill of the physician—in many cases, far more. Of the labors of nurses for humanity, it is not necessary to speak here. But in our present public health campaign, a new type of nurse has appeared, “the visiting nurse,” who watches homes to guard against disease as well as to cure, and she is now regarded by competent observers as the strategic point in the battle for improved health in our cities and towns. ”

“ It gives us300 hope for a better state of things. An institution for training nurses in connection with the infirmary has been built and organised. This is a matter of necessity, because all who wish to nurse efficiently must learn how to nurse in a hospital.
“Nursing, especially that most important of all its branches—nursing of the sick poor at home—is no amateur work. To do it as it ought to be done requires knowledge, practice, self-abnegation, and as is so well said here, direct obedience to and activity under the highest of all Masters and from the highest of all motives. ”

“ Its graduates, moreover, are trained not only in psychiatric and general nursing, as well as the care of neurological cases, but in hydrotherapy, occupational therapy, reeducational, industrial and social work. The nurse of the future who has had no psychiatric training and experience is one whose education is not complete. Every effort should be made to encourage the training schools of general hospitals to send their senior nurses to a hospital for mental diseases for a service of at least three months. ”

“ Vincent de Paul Society to care for Catholic consumptives, or by a Jewish organization to follow up Jewish patients—any arrangement through which she visits one patient in a block, but refuses the case next door, means a narrow field of service. She then becomes the nurse of an institution, or a sect, rather than a public health nurse. The object of her work is not the welfare of the community, but the welfare of certain individual patients. ”

“ It takes much persuasion to induce a sick man to leave his home, and it often takes still more to persuade his family to let him go. To point out the necessity for institutional care, and induce the patient to take advantage of this, is the chief duty of the public health nurse. Only when she does this duty thoroughly and well does the demand for hospital beds exceed the supply. For example: in Baltimore, before the nurses went 208on duty, the large hospital for advanced cases was never more than half full. The community was not well enough educated to take advantage of it. ”