Healthcare worker

“ The nurses, however, still carry it on. "You see, while I am practically tied to the place," writes the doctor, "it gives so much happiness to be able to send out workers like these and to spread our influence. As the nurses say, they will be able to send a lot of patients back to the hospital. You see the more work we have the merrier we are."
Every time an evangelistic worker goes out on the district, one of the nurses accompanies her, and with ointments, simple medicines, bandages, vaccine, etc., treats several hundred patients in the country beyond the reach of physicians. ”

“ The home situation clearly has to be considered as well as the physical ailment in almost every case requiring medical care. Thus the task is a coöperative one between the social worker and the medical scientist. ”

“ I do not mean, of course, that she is to ape the doctor's scientific investigations, that she is to use instruments of precision, or to try to prescribe medicines. But she is to help the physician in some of the following ways:
He is often very much at a loss to be sure how bad the patient's symptoms really are, how much the patient suffers, how serious the case is. The social worker is often able to help in discovering why the patient really came to the dispensary, discovering, perhaps, that the reason is such as to show that the malady is really a trifling one. ”

“ If the hospital nurse was till lately untrained and untrustworthy, what must the workhouse nurse be, in the still lower depth of social life from which she is taken? It is a fact that those who have once been employed in hospitals come, as a last resource, to the workhouse, and are there set in office over wards of sick and dying persons. ”

“ We are not particularly interested here in this academic discussion but we should be mindful of it in giving consideration to the organization and administration of our hospitals. There is a limit to all things so the social service worker is limited in his or her field of activity. We seem to be living in an age of specialization. We need sanity in the practice of our professions irrespective of their nature ”

“ It will be acknowledged that as the presence of a nurse in a sick-ward, who is sent there to learn, is considered unobjectionable, the presence of a few physicians observing a case, which can not be injured by their so doing, is not only not injurious, but ought to be demanded by the public, who have a right to expect a physician in their own families who has seen and knows and understands what he is called in to treat. I do not see why hospital patients only should have the best money and service can afford, and why the public at large should have to fall back in many cases on untried skill. ”

“ The nurse should work under the direction of, and in co-operation with, all those physicians who, whether as public officials or private practitioners, are working for a higher standard of public welfare. To all such, without discrimination, the public health nurse is the faithful, efficient, and tireless ally. ”

“ If I do not work hard I feel fairly comfortable, and yet I am not well, I receive $30 a month when I am outside the hospital, I receive $80 a month and my board and room when I am in the hospital. Personally I would much prefer to remain at home, but when I work hard enough to make a living I break down. I have seen so many men in the hospital who are receiving their board and lodging and their $80 a month who are not as deserving of this as I am that I do not propose to remain at home and work on my present compensation, and I would just like to see you keep me out of a hospital. ”

“ All of the physicians and all of the nurses are employed by the year and they can have no practice outside of the hospital. Including the interns, twenty-one physicians and surgeons are on the staff. These men have been selected with great care and they are paid salaries that amount to at least as much as they would ordinarily earn in successful private practice. They have, none of them, any financial interest whatsoever in any patient, and a patient may not be treated by a doctor from the outside. ”

“ The provision of paid leave time and continued health coverage to incumbent health care workers to allow their participation in nursing career ladder programs, including certified nurse assistants, licensed practical nurses, licensed vocational nurses, and registered nurses. ”

“ It is not until we realize that we have not a cure already, that we do hustle around to get it. It is not until we realize that we are now very helpless in medicine that we shall labor in a way to become less so. At present the best that we can do for most patients is to explain what the trouble is, let them know what is going to happen, to preach some hygiene, and above all to make them realize that we care and suffer with them. That is the essence of medical work and of the social assistant's work in the dispensary and in the home. ”

“ The physician may do very much for the welfare of the sick, more than others can do, although he does not, even in the major part of cases, undertake to control and overcome the disease by art. It was with these views that I never reported any patient cured at our hospital. ”

“ One of the cornerstones of a strong healthcare system is the provision of competent and efficient medical professionals. We will exert all efforts to improve the welfare of our doctors, our nurses, and other medical frontliners. ”

“ The health care system shall give preference to the training and employment of local community health workers, and focus on primary health care while maintaining strong links with other levels of health care services. ”

“ But it is not uncommon for an undertaker's wife to be sent for to perform these duties, and take a measure for a shroud. For these services she is paid from $3 to $5. A nurse runs the risk of contracting a contagious disease; but, if the system is in a good condition, there is not much danger. As long as people are sick, which will be as long as there are any, nurses will be employed. Of course, there is most to do in sickly seasons. I called on Mrs. P., who charges $5 a week for her services. She does all that is required for the patient, except give medical advice. ”

“ Is it not obvious that there should be a staff of medical officers and orderlies, detached altogether from any association with the treatment of disease, who should devote themselves entirely to the problem of prevention? ”

“ When an employé is ill, he's ill, and it makes no difference to me whether he goes to a general hospital or a hospital for the insane. Should you ever find yourself in need of treatment or rest, I want you to feel that you can take it when and where you please, and work for us again when you are able. ”

“ After six months’ service each nurse is entitled to 15 days’ leave with pay, but up to now we have not been{172} able to spare the nurses, for we have always a few who are sick. I have six sick ones over in the Sick Sisters’ Hospital now, but if things stay as they are now, I won’t have to send for the ones who are on leave. My sick ladies are not very sick. One has an infected finger, another an infected big toe, and the others have slight fevers, or very bad colds which are really the grippe. It is such a blessing that we have such a splendid place to send our sick nurses. ”

“ On the other hand, an extra mercantile spirit has come in—of forcing up wages, regardless of the truism that Nursing has been raised from the sink it was, not more by training, than by making the Hospital, Workhouse Infirmary, or District Home a place of moral and healthful safe-guards, inspiring a sense of duty and love of the calling. ”

“ While a nurse is supposed to be sufficiently well and strong to go on duty every day, in all weathers and at all seasons of the year, a reasonable allowance for illness should nevertheless be made. Two weeks’ annual sick-leave is a good allowance. ”

“ The common physicians are always employed by the job, and always on the condition, no cure no pay. Sometimes, if the disease is chronic, and but little hope of recovery, they stipulate to pay a certain sum in case of an alleviation of the disease, and so much more in case of a permanent cure. A bargain is always struck by the patient himself, or by his friends, before the physician takes charge of the case. ”

“ We are told that neuro-psychiatric, contagious, and tuberculosis cases predominate. Right here is one difficulty as far as nurses are concerned. To contribute the highest type of service to people so afflicted requires that the living conditions, the mental and physical recreation and up-building of the nursing staff, be of the finest order. I think that this is conceded by all who consider the long hours during which the nurse is in close contact with the patient and who realize that no individual, barring none, has so large an opportunity for personal influence upon patients as the nurse. ”

“ These precautions are taken in order to insure, within the limits of present-day knowledge, a correct diagnosis.
At the present time, there are about six hundred beds available. Every patient pays according to a fixed schedule that includes the hospital room, board, medical and surgical attendance, and nursing. There are no extras. There are no private nurses. If a case requires more attention than the nurses assigned to the wing can give, then another nurse is put on, but without any additional expense to the patient. ”

“ We felt that the nursing of the sick in their homes should be undertaken seriously and adequately; that instruction should be incidental and not the primary consideration; that the etiquette, so far as doctor and patient were concerned, should be analogous to the established system of private nursing; that the nurse should be as ready to respond to calls from the people themselves as to calls from physicians; that she should accept calls from all physicians, and with no more red-tape or formality than if she were to remain with one patient continuously. ”

“ It continues the old popular conception of private medical practice, and allows the public to remain obsessed with the notion that satisfactory medical care consists in a “visit and a bottle.” No provision is made for pathological aids to diagnosis, beyond what is already provided by public health authorities. No nurses are available for serious cases; the insured person is not entitled to surgical operations, when needed, except of the simplest character. ”

“ As nurses I believe it is our privilege and our duty to work for health of body and health of mind as inseparable. Experience has proved that too often the physically ill patient (hitherto nervously well) returns from hospital care addicted to the illness-accepting attitude for which the nurse must be held responsible. ”

“ My attention was drawn several times to the desirability of increased care during the critical years of early adolescence through an extension of the medical service under the National Insurance Act to all industrially employed persons. Some Welfare Workers found that constant attention was needed to prevent a widespread deterioration in health during the first period of employment, and their efforts were frequently hampered by lack of facilities for medical attention. ”

“ After thirty years' work in the city, after twenty-five years' constant labor in public institutions, I ought to know the difference. And I do know and publicly proclaim that the results of the best of physicians have vastly improved since their cases have been in the hands of trained nurses. This is so in private dwellings; it is the same in hospitals. In the hospitals the difference can be measured on a large scale. In them the trained nurse has worked a vast improvement.
Every large hospital ought to perform a double duty. ”

“ He said he had experienced hospital work when they were dependent upon the most undesirable man that could be found to take care of the sick. The man who could not do anything else was the one that took the place of the nurse. He also told his experiences in Boston when the influenza epidemic came, how in less than a month over 1300 cases were being treated by a staff of nurses scarcely larger than before, how the women worked day and night without rest and often without food, and how many of them lost their lives in the struggle. ”

“ Our young women go off to some training hospital, get a diploma after three years’ voluntary service, and set up as trained nurses. As such, when they get employment, they make from ten to twenty-five dollars per week, with their board and lodging. ”

“ The rest of the staff were well-to-do society people who not only financed the institution but also did the nursing and orderly work, gave their automobiles as ambulances, and their personal servants and chauffeurs to act as servants in the hospital. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We all know that much of the daily work of the physician goes to charity, that the public health authorities and sanitary officers are but scantily compensated for their arduous and often dangerous labors. There can be no question that as a profession medicine stands at the head in disinterested service ”