Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Miss Lonsdale on Guy's Hospital. 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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![But I ought to develop more clearly the point now in question— uainely, the difference between hospital an,d private nursing. I be- lieve there could not be just now a more beneficial social impulse than one that would induce women, gentlewomen by birth or otherwise, to establish schools of higher nursing and minor surgery at any hospitals that have no medical schools, or at the parish infirmaries. Such schools would be under the auspices of the surgeons of those institutions, who would for proper consideration doubtless undertake to supervise the teaching of women to do many of the things now done at Guy's Hospital by the dressers and reporters. The modern trained nurse for private sick-rooms is a great improve- ment on the sick nurse of former times. ' But she is not nearly what she might be. How vastly far short she falls of the ideal nurse of Miss Wood's Manual! When do we meet in private sick-rooms with nurses who can keep good reports of the progress of the case, observing and describing the various symptoms the doctor is not there to witness; who can use bandages and strapping intelligently; dress antiseptically; preserve local temperatures, without requiring so much direction that one could quicker do it all one's self? The surgeon or physician at an. hospital which has a medical school attached, enjoys a great advantage over the surgeon or physician in the private sick room because he is aided by skilled students as dressers. To these young gentlemen fall all such duties as bandaging, dressing wounds, superintending the use of baths given for purposes of cure, and doing numerous other of the like services, such as form the lower branches of what is called minor surgery. Especially, they undertake all the reporting of the cases, so that in all these important matters belonging to the private nurse, she cannot gain experience at Guy's. But although the students of Guy's must do these things to obtain practice in them, yet there is no reason in the world why nurses should not be trained elsewhere to do the work of dressers and reporters; and in fact to become as invaluable in the private sick-room as the Guy's dressers are at the hospital.] Here is a great future branch of duty ready to be taken up by intelligent women. I am sure that medical gentlemen in private practice would gladly avail themselves of the aid of nurses so trained as to be to them the equivalent of the hospital surgeon's dresser or reporter, in cases requiring the like degree of attention. If intelligent women are desirous of supplying a higher and a more lucrative service than that usually rendered by women in the sick- room, it is quite within their power. High-class nursing may be put on a far better footing than it ever will be put upon by the ravings of a fashionable mania. Let ladies found schools of higher nursing and minor surgery, where they can acquire and teach a degree of skill which will deserve some such title as Dresser-nurse. With a good Dresser- nurse in the home of his private patient, the doctor in attendance could feel the same satisfaction in the intervals between his visits, as he now vainly envies in the hospital surgeon who knows a good dresser is in charge](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22303686_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
