Subsidiary notes as to the introduction of female nursing into military hospitals in peace and war.

  • Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Subsidiary notes as to the introduction of female nursing into military hospitals in peace and war. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.

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    ITnless the Matron's authority is supported by the Principal Medical Officer the Patients always suffer. The Nurse is the only proper person to be responsible for the directions of the Medical Officers being carried out in a General Hospital. Ill, It will enable the Matron to stop all nonsensical pru- dery, on the part of the nurses, and to require that they should do what they undertake to do, and not pass off to an Orderly, still less to a patient, the duties they should discharge them- selves. As a general rule there is a good deal of this false modesty on the part of Nurses, especially of Head Nurses. In individual cases it is a serious thing to shake even false ideas of decorum : in laying down general Rules it is the more important to lay down as duties what are such. Suppose an application of what the French call la petite chirurgie ordered. The Head Nurse never dreams of doing such things. The Nurse, following her superior's false shame of duty, transfers the business to an ignorant patient. In some cases great harm has arisen thereby to the Patient. In other cases, but not the majority, after such an order given, the Head Nurse goes quietly to the bed, draws the curtain round it, and makes the application herself—saying she always did that herself, as it was a business requiring care, as the patient was often disposed to resist, and as she was thus certain that it was properly and effectively done. I have always admired and respected such women ; but they are not the majority. Very often patients are allowed or left to do things for themselves, which they cannot do properly, or when they ought not to be trusted to inflict the pain on themselves which doing things properly often causes. The practice of allowing some particular patient to become a sort of half orderly in the ward, letting him always attend some particular case, or give general help in severe cases, is most reprehensible. It is never allowed, whether in Civil or in Military Hospitals, without very bad consequences to the discipline of the ward. Where extra help, in lifting, &c., is required, let the Nurse require the most convalescent of the patients to help, but let her carefully refrain from selecting any patient or allowing any patient to put himself forward, as a regular help or quasi-Orderly. As an almost invariable rule it c