Report of the Royal Commission on the practice of subjecting live animals to experiments for scientific purposes : with minutes and evidence and appendix / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of her Majesty.
- Great Britain. Royal Commission on Vivisection (1875)
- Date:
- 1876
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report of the Royal Commission on the practice of subjecting live animals to experiments for scientific purposes : with minutes and evidence and appendix / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of her Majesty. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
1039/1052 (page 609)
![1. Hired Nurses, unless they are also frcr'nicd Nurses, are not worth their hire unless by accident. There must be trained Matrons (Superintendents) to superintend trained Nurses. 2. Every trained and organised nursing staff' should, as one of its duties, undertake the training of Nurses for infirmary work on some such plan as that the details of which have been given above. 3. The Matron (Superintendent) should be responsible to the government of the infii-mary alone for the efficient discharge of her duties ; and the Nurses should be responsible to the Matron alone for the discharge of their duties. 4. It has been proved by experience that the efficiency of nursing is to a consider- able extent dependent on hospital construction, and on the kind of accommodation provided for the nursing service. The following structural arrangements are among the most necessary for this object:— («.) The larger the sick wards, up to, say, 32 beds, the less expense is necessary for nursing staff, because supervision is so much easier with a given staff where the v/ards are large than where they are small. (6.) The Matron and the whole of her Nurses (including pupil-nurses) must be lodged within the hospital buildings. (c.) The Matron should have sole charge and responsibility of mending, storing, and issuing linen. Hence a linen store and mending room close to the Matron's quarters are required. [Patients' clothing and bedding, &c. will probably also come under the Matron.] (il.) Each ward should have a small room for the Head Nurse, suitably furnished (('.) Each ward should have a small scullery, with hot and cold water supply, besides the usual lavatory, bath, and water-closet accommodation. (/.) The superficial area per bed required for good nursing and good ward ad- ministration will depend on the form of the ward. More is required where the ward is badly shaped and insufficiently lighted than where the floor and window •space are properly arranged. With well-proportioned wards and windows on opposite sides, with the beds between the windows, the floor space per bed should be at least 100 square feet, with eight feet of wall space per bed. IV. District Nursing.* With regard to District Nursing among the sick poor : there must be District Training for District Nurses, in addition to their years' Hospital Training. To turn Hospital Nurses into districts and tell them to nurse, is to do nothing either to train or to govern District Nurses, even if they are under local Superintend- ing Ladies, as they always should be, unless these Local Superintendents are them- selves Trained Hospital and District Nurses, which they rarely or never can be; that is, unless they know better than the supervised (which is the essence of all super- vision) what to do, what Nursing is, and what a Nurse should be. The District Nurse can only learn to nurse in a Bistfict. The universal danger in District Nursing is that the Nurse does not really nurse, that she degenerates into a giver; that she rarely sees, or receives directions, verbal or written, from the Doctor in attendance, where there is one, but on her own i-esponsibility applies lotions and dressings, or administer beef-tea, &:c. She goes her own way. The cases are mostly simple ones, and she brings (or ought to bring) order and cleanliness with her into the abodes of the most disorderly. But, if she is really to nurse she must have training and knowledge of the kind which a Hospital Nurse has not. For the Hospital Nurse has always a House Surgeon and other Medical Officers at hand to take the responsibility. The Hospital Nurse has all the newest and best Hospital appliances. Indeed, her duty is to have all these ready to hand, the Dis- trict Nurse's duty to do without them. The rule of District Nurses, of course, is, that ' if a Doctor is found in attendance, the Nurse is directed to caiTy out h is prescriptions.' But the ' Doctor in attendance ' is, and must be, the exception, and not the rule. Every District Nurse should therefore, after being carefully selected from those who have had at least a year's Hospital Probation, pass through a very thorough District Training. There should be a District Matron, or Lady Superintendent—a woman of the highest training as Nurse, of great powers of mind and supervision, to fulfil her incomparably We do not at present ivnin District Nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital. (0!).) 4 H](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b23983334_1063.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
