Annual report : 1942 / Society of the Lying-in Hospital of the City of New York.

  • Society of the Lying-In Hospital of the City of New-York.
Date:
1942
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report : 1942 / Society of the Lying-in Hospital of the City of New York. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ments. Since actual nursing procedures and care have always been conducted along essential rather than luxury lines, little could be eliminated, but certain duties have been reallocated to the growing staff of practical nurses and to Red Cross Volunteer Nurses’ Aides. The latter group contributed the equivalent of 233 eight-hour days. Nurses were relieved of some of the clerical work by other volunteers who gave a total of 198 eight- hour days. Medical students were most helpful in the labor and delivery rooms. A well organized nursing service scrupulously maintained provides excellent instruction in general hygiene for the patient. Good maternity nursing not only demands but lends itself to a close-knit and well integrated program of instruction for the mother on the care of herself and her baby. The main educa¬ tional value to the patient of such a nursing regime lies in its simplicity and continuity. There are signs that at present this is less effective than formerly. The constant adjustments by which the head nurses must secure the safety and physical comfort of the mothers and their babies destroys the con¬ tinuity of service, with the result that the patient learns little from her hospital experience. The principle that a decrease in opportunities for incidental learning must be met with increased planned instruction would seem to apply here. Fifty-nine undergraduate students have completed the course in obstetrical nursing conducted at the Lying-In Hospital. Forty-five of these were students of the Cornell University-New York Hospital School of Nursing and fourteen from the Moses Taylor Hospital School of Nursing in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Seventeen graduates completed the course, representing fourteen hospitals in ten states and two foreign countries, China and Costa Rica. Though there was a substantial increase in the number of our own students assigned to the department, the total was less than last year because of the marked decrease in graduate students due to recruitment for military services. I cannot close this report without expressing my heartfelt appreciation to those who have helped us meet the unusual demands of the year. I am grateful to those who answer for us in the armed forces of the United States; no less to the super- [13]