Hospital plans : Five essays relating to the construction, organization & management of hospitals / contributed by their authors for the use of the Johns Hopkins hospital of Baltimore.

  • Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hospital plans : Five essays relating to the construction, organization & management of hospitals / contributed by their authors for the use of the Johns Hopkins hospital of Baltimore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    more practical value than any set of rules which can now be pre- sented. Nevertheless, it is necessary to refer to some details under this head, in order that the plan for the construction of the Hospital may be understood. I would recommend, then, that there be one Resident Physician to every fifty (50) patients, one or two for the Dispensary for Out- door Relief, and one in the Pathological Laboratory. To each of these physicians I would allow two students, to be changed in rotation according to the number available. The Apothecary should also have two students. When the Hospital is completed there would thus be 22 students employed, and it will probably be some time before the school will have a much larger graduat- ing class than this. The separate branches of administration will require a steward, charged with purchases and property responsibility; a wardmas- fcer, charged with the execution of orders relative to disinfection, isolation, etc., and with the supervision of male employees; a su- perintendent of female nurses, an engineer, an apothecary, and a chief cook. All of these report to the Physician-in-Charge, or through him to the Board. Inasmuch as the Training School for Nurses is to be connected with the Hospital and will be controlled by the same authority, the greater part of the nurses should be females. They should have a separate building, which may be on or near the hospital grounds.* A number of clerks, messengers, ward orderlies, and laborers will be required, for whom accommodation must be provided. As a very important part of the training of a nurse consists in teaching her how to prepare and serve food properly, it may be a question how far they should be employed in the main kitchen of the Hospital. If a suitable woman can be obtained for chief cook, the main kitchen would be a valuable aid to the Training- School. I have never seen such a woman, and my personal ex- perience in large hospitals is that it is better to employ as chief cook a first-class man, in which case the instructions of the nurses in cooking will be mainly given in the diet-kitchens attached to the wards. * [Note.—Attention is invited to an account of the Dresden Nursing Association by Dr. Fleming, in the Glasgow .V< (Seal Journal for April, 1875, and especially to the mod« of instruction there indicated for female nurses.]