Vol. 60, 1909 - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

328 THE CHARLOTTE MEDICAL JOURNAL. !
class, which almost without exception is ning expenses of the institution which will;
strongly influenced by national prejudice, make a somewhat favorable showing at thej
Eirors in the System of Training:. expiration of the fiscal year. Can tliis inj
In addition to these personal traits of the any sense be construed to represent a square!
superintendents of nursing, which have
done much to bring to pass the present undeal?
Just as appropriate, it seems to me,
would it be to add to a course in medical]
fortunate state of affairs, it stands to reason
that mistakes should be made in the process
of constructing a new system of nurtraining
an extra year in which the stu-j
dents would be compelled to clean and pel-!
ish medical in surgical instruments and';
sing founded on modern scientific princi- other paraphernalia, and then claim that|
pies. Time alone can determine the value thereby the preparation of the students forj
or uselessness of anything, and of a system the practice of their profession is the better'or
theory as well. That which promises and more thorough. And just as consist-
well at the outset may result disastrously in ent would it be to condemn as inferior andl
the long run. Therefore, there are to be mediocre all other colleges which did not i
found in the system of training, as now ad- countenance this imjjosition upon their stu-
vocaled, certain glaring faults demanding dent bodies and proclaim these institutions
immediate correction or elimination in or- as affording courses of instruction of g
der that a degree of perfection may be at- lower standard than that set by them, li
tained. enter a hearty protest against this injustic i
In a recent address delivered before the to our student nurses, who have entered s li
graduating class of the Philadelphia School training school, as they believed, aud have
for Nurses I took occasion to call attention not matriculated in an employment agency, •;
to some of these evils. Again, it is not necessary that a nurse;
It is my desire at this time to enlarge up- should acquire an extensive medical educa
i
on these defects, and to point out, as far as tion equal to at least a two-years' course in i
this may be possible and practicable, the a medical college. She is not to become a \
remedy—which, let me emphasize, must be poor doctor, but the best of nurses, and res' j
radical in order to eliminate the canker assured there is a vast distinction betweer I
which is marring and even threatening to the two.
destroy one of the noblest aspects of Samar- This, I believe, may be regarded as axi j
itanism in the world. omatic—that good nursing is not facilitatec j
The Education of a Nurse. by too elaborate an education in profes \
In the first place, then, the education of sional matters; rather is it hampered oi
nurse does not mean a comprehensive in- even rendered useless thereby. A superfi
struction in the arts of scrubbing, washing cial knowledge of physiology and anatomy
and the other ordinary kitchen duties. Yet together with a thorough acquaintance witl
how often do we see from five to ten months hygiene, will answer every purpose It is
or more consumed in just such menial labor just as well that the nurse should know
as this? Frequently has my indignation that the femur has nothing to do with th(
burned when I have seen sweet and refined arm, but it is beyond her province to exyoung
girls who came from homes of cul- pect her to accurately set a broken limb
ture and dignity compelled to perform tasks Every nurse should know that there an
which they had never dreamt of when at certain disease-bearing or disease-producinj
home, which they would never be called germs, and that these may.be, and gener
upon to do after their graduation and which ally are, carried by means of unclean handi
would bear no more relationship to their or instruments; but, as I see it, itisnoti
education as trained nurses than would a sential for her to trace the life history oi._.
knowledge of horse-shoing or of cobbling, bacillus, nor to enumerate the pyogen|
And somehow I never could quite free my- germs, nor will it aid her nursing in tl
self from a lurking suspicion that there was slightest degree to know that the bacillll
an economic reason behind it all, and this bremensis febrisgastrica will produce S3'mii
suspicion was largely confirmed when I no- toms closely resembling typhoid fever, Iju
ticed the conspicuous lack of hired help in in which the Widal reaction cannot be ob
such institutions. tained. A fair knowledge of pharmac
Of course, this extra and altogether use- however, together with the ability to quie
less work, so far as concerns the actual ly and accurately make percentage soli^
training of a nurse, consumes time which tions, is an excellent adjuvant to the
can only be taken at the expense of the ma- ity to rocord a temperature, a pulse-i
triculates, and"ultimately and indirectly of and a pulse-respiration ratio. Ifi in ad
the patients. The course of training is tion, a course of instruction in nursing
thereby unnecessarily lengthened by at engrafted upon a fair general educati|
least one year. And to what purpose? None and this is backed up by a heap of comt
whatever, save a curtailment in the run- sense, then may we expect to find
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