Volunteer hospital nursing / by Elizabeth Garrett.

  • Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
Date:
[1866]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Volunteer hospital nursing / by Elizabeth Garrett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    supervision. When they do not live in the hospital, they eke out their scanty incomes by working the greater part of the day, and consequently they come to the hospital hoping to be able to sleep the greater part of the night. On the whole, ordinary hospital nursing may be described as a mixture of good, indifferent, and bad —the head nurses being often very good, the under nurses fairly good when under supervision, and bad when left without it. In contrast to this, the volunteer method puts the nui'sing department into the hands of ladies who, having elected to do the work, are interested in doing it well. The main difference is, that the control no longer rests with the matron, and that at least the higher part of the nursing is done gratuitously. The head nurses are replaced by ladies to whom the under nurses are directly responsible. At King's College and University College Hospitals in London, where this method has been introduced, there is but one opinion as to the immense improvement in the nursing since the change was effected. The Lancet has recently given emphatic testimony on the same point. Eeferring to the volunteer help given during the cholera epidemic, it says, The nursing by ladies is the very best nursing that England has yet seen; and it prophesies that we cannot long refuse to adopt a system which embodies intelligence, the keenest sympathy, refinement, and, it might have added, econom)^ In fact, the advanliages to the patients and to the hospitals arc so great and so obvious, that it is astonishing to find any one blind to them. It is all gain to them to get in the place of paid servants, ladies who are wilhng to do the work for nothing in a peculiarly admirable manner. But admitting the superiority of ladies as nurses, it is still possible to question the wisdom of asking them to take up nursing as a j)rofession. ]So amount of medical testimony in favour of their fitness for the work is of much avail when we are asking, Is the work fit for them ? The Lancet says it is, apparently on the ground that the volunteer cholera nurses, in spite of very hard work, con- tinued in excellent health. And in truth the health and strength argument, as it may be called, is entirely with those who advocate nursing by volunteers. There is very little room for doubt that most ladies would find the work of hospital nursing positively invigorating. (Constant exercise in large and airy wards, employment of the kind