Nursing school

“ Matron (who underwent a most serious course of training at our Nurses' School at St. Thomas' Hospital) , 15 Assistants, and 52 ex-pauper women, whom we are to train as Nurses. [36] I am sure it is not for us to talk of Civilization. For I have seen, in our English Workhouse Infirmaries, neglect, cruelty, and malversation such as can scarcely be surpassed in semi-barbarous countries. And it was then I felt I must found a school for Nurses for Workhouses, &c. The opportunity has come too late for me to do the Workhouse Nursing myself. ”

“ It was also set forth that the hospital maintained a school with a three years' course of study wherein women were trained to nurse the sick and injured; that in this school there were enrolled twenty-four in the third-year class, eighteen in the second-year class, and twenty-three in the first-year class; that a part of the 'education and training' of these 'student nurses' consisted in 'aiding, nursing, and attending to the wants of the sick and injured persons' in the hospital, this work being done while the student was pursuing the prescribed course of study ”

“ From the figures of the school report of 1898, we find over 10,000 [398] women as teachers and assistants in the public and private schools. The profession of nursing, too, which ten years ago was just opening, has already drawn many women into its ranks. In the Red Cross hospitals alone there are this year nearly a thousand nurses taking the course, and a thousand graduates scattered throughout the country hold themselves ready to answer the call of the society in the time of need, in the mean time practicing their profession wherever they may chance to be. ”

“ The more it is considered, the more essential it appears, to train Nurses, from the first, to do efficiently a great deal of work. A small staff of respectable, laborious, and thoroughly efficient women seems the thing to be aimed at; whether considering Military Hospitals by themselves, or as a training-school for Hospital war-service.
5. It would be better to give each Nurse one great ward; but wards above a certain size are inadmissible for sanitary reasons.
6. The care of 24 to 30 patients is not sufficient duty, by a great deal, for a Nurse. ”

“ With regard to the modern organized nursing system, reference has been made to the training of nurses for hospital work. There are schools attached to each of the great hospitals. There are now, however, several bodies who are [477] trained to work in the homes of the people, such as the Canadian Order of Nurses, Phillip’s School for Nurses and the Victorian Order of Nurses. The latter movement being the latest development and one that has reached Dominion prominence, deserves especial historical recognition. ”

“ After graduating from the training school, the nurse may undertake private nursing or she may follow her profession in institutional work. Private nursing is exacting, and the nurse must be strong and capable. Her hours are longer and much more irregular than when she was in training, and often she will be on her own responsibility. She will feel, however, that she is doing work of great value, and she will win the regard of many of her patients and their families. The good standing of the training school is an assistance to the nurse when she looks for cases. ”

“ This teaching is given by physicians, some of whom are connected with the hospital, while others, often prominent men, occasionally give lectures. The superintendent, assistant superintendent, and head nurses also give practical directions to the pupils as to the management of the sick.
Each school has its favorite text-book on nursing. One of the most popular works is the "New Haven Hand-book of Nursing," which is used in the East and West, and in New York. In the New York schools the "Bellevue Manual" is also used. ”

“ It may be conceded that a nurse, possessing a preliminary graded school education, who has been carefully taught for two or three years in an accredited hospital, is able to give nursing care, under medical supervision, to the sick bed patient. ”

“ At least four important training-schools for nurses are now working under the direction of universities, and other provision has been made to give education supplementary to the hospital training.
Nurses themselves have taken the initiative in securing the means for equipping women in their profession to meet the new requirements. They are providing helpful literature and finding stimulating associations with others enlisted in similar efforts for human welfare. I had the honor to be elected first president of the National Organization for Public Health Nursing. ”

“ I am neither for nor against ‘Paid Nurses.’ My principle has always been: that we should give the best training we could to any woman of any class, of any sect, paid or unpaid, who had the requisite qualifications, moral, intellectual, and physical, for the vocation of a Nurse. Unquestionably, the educated will be more likely to rise to the post of Superintendents, not because they are ladies, but because they are educated.—The relation of a nursing staff to the medical officers is that of the building staff to an architect. ”

“ Faculty, students, and administrators dance together in the study of nursing. Faculty support an environment that values the uniqueness of each person and sustains each person's unique way of living and growing in caring. This process requires trust, hope, courage, and patience. Because the purpose of nursing education is to study the discipline and practice of nursing, the nursed must be in the circle. The community created is that of persons living caring in the moment, each person valued as special and unique. ”

“ The patient and family gained the important value of confidence through the caring of the home health nurse; with the nurse's commitment to caring, they gained faith in themselves, their ability to deal with new health-related situations as they arose, faith that they wouldn't be left alone, faith that they were known as persons valuable in their own right and worthy of care. This is the value of nursing, the reason nursing exists as a distinguishable social and human service. ”

“ She should never lose sight of the fact that she is not being trained solely to conform to any one hospital routine or to become expert in only one method of nursing care. She is being prepared to go out and give nursing care to any young woman and her baby who need it, no matter where or how they are situated or by what methods they are treated.
If conditions are such that the doctor’s orders and the patient’s requirements seem impossible of fulfillment, then the nurse must attempt the impossible and attempt it with confidence of success. ”

“ The plan adopted requires that the instruction in Home Nursing shall be given by enrolled Red Cross nurses, who must, in a large measure, be secured through the local committees. As the work develops we hope that nurses especially qualified to instruct women in the principles of right living and the home care of the sick may be found willing to devote their whole time to this instruction. Even two classes a day would give a fair income and an opportunity to render valuable service to a community. ”

“ Faculty and students study nursing together. Faculty join students in a constant search to discover the content and meaning of the discipline. Undoubtedly, this understanding of extant possibilities presents a different view of the role of teacher. Yet, it is a view that engenders the sort of humility essential to nursing for there is always more to know. ”

“ Every woman, or at least almost every woman, in England has, at one time or another of her life, charge of the personal health of somebody, whether child or invalid,—in other words, every woman is a nurse. Every day sanitary knowledge, or the knowledge of nursing, or in other words, of how to put the constitution in such a state as that it will have no disease, or that it can recover from disease, takes a higher place. ”

“ Nurses with specialized training treat cancer patients, stroke victims, and psychiatric patients. Nurse researchers are developing new and better ways to improve nursing practice, reduce patient stress, and help patients and their families cope with illness. ”

“ Women of the finest type are needed for this work and those who have had specialized training in public health activities. Several visiting nursing associations to be utilized as training centers for Red Cross nurses offer good opportunities for students to become familiar with social work of various kinds through lectures, study courses and affiliations with philanthropic societies in the city. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Private schools, colleges, factories, and departmental stores employ the services of trained nurses.
A few children's hospitals give short courses in training for children's nurses—an employment for which many girls are specially fitted. This course must not be confused with the regular instruction of the trained nurse, as it is not on a level with the profession of trained nursing. A children's nurse with hospital training will receive twenty or twenty-five dollars a month; in some instances such a nurse is paid higher wages. ”

“ As professionals, we are accustomed to viewing nursing as we practice it within these specialty contexts—for example, pediatric, medical, rehabilitation, intensive care, long-term care, community. There seems to be no end to the proliferation of diversifications. Even the attempts of practitioners to combine specialties give rise to new specialties, such as, community mental health nursing and child psychiatric nursing. ”

“ Private asylums are on a different basis and do not as a rule offer training.
A trained nurse may hope for promotion to posts as Sister of a ward, Night Superintendent, Assistant Matron, or Matron. These posts demand personal attributes in addition to good training—e.g., powers of organisation and administration, a knowledge of housekeeping, laundry work, etc. For the higher posts, training in general nursing is essential. In all forms of mental nursing it is undoubtedly a great advantage if the nurse has had a preliminary general training before entering on the special branch of the work. ”

“ The story lived anew provides students the opportunity to participate in a lived experience of nursing and to create new possibilities. Since nursing can only occur through intentionality and authentic presence with the nursed, students and faculty share how they prepare to enter the world of the nursed, and how they come to understand that world. This process requires that students be encouraged to live fully their personhood. ”

“ And to cultivate in things pertaining to health observation and experience in women who are mothers, governesses or nurses, is just the way to do away with amateur physicking, and if the doctors did but know it, to make the nurses obedient to them,—helps to them instead of hindrances. Such education in women would indeed diminish the doctor's work—but no one really believes that doctors wish that there should be more illness, in order to have more work.
[Sidenote: What pathology teaches. What observation alone teaches. What medicine does. What nature alone does.] ”

“ At the heart of choosing new faculty is knowing their passion for and love of nursing. A focus of the interview process is discerning the person's devotion to the discipline. It is our belief that this attitude, this love of nursing, is the music for the dancers in the circle. One way to know if prospective faculty love nursing is to ask them to share a significant story from practice. Having faculty share a story illuminates their conceptualization of the discipline. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If you inform yourselves on the subject, and if you set yourselves to work, to deal with it, as we do with any other great evil that tortures helpless people, you will be able to act directly upon your friends outside, and ultimately get up an amount of public opinion among women capable of becoming Nurses, which will be of the greatest possible aid to our efforts in improving Hospital and Workhouse Nursing. ”

“ But every man to his trade, and though the teacher in charge must know something about ailing children, it is very doubtful if a few months in a hospital will advantage her much. Here she trenches on the province of the real nurse, whose training is thorough, and the little knowledge, as every one knows, is sometimes dangerous. One Nursery School teacher, with years of experience, says that what she learned in hospital has been of no use to her, and it is probable that attendance at a clinic for children would be really more useful. ”