Ninety Four Years Ago.... THE NURSING JOURNAL OF INDIA, NOVEMBER 1910

Nursing Journal of India, Nov 2004 by Barker, Lewellys F

ON THE EXPANSION OF NURSING

There is a great paradox in the history of nursing; out of two of the bloodies war ever waged by mankind, the life-saving art of modern trained nursing emerged. The terrible struggle in the Crimea took Miss Florence Nightingale, soon to be affectionately recognized as "Lady-in-Chief ' of the army, to the Barrack Hospital at Scutari; after her return she was rewarded by the permission and means to found the St. Thomas Hospital Training School for Nurses. The Civil War in America, the horrors of which still haunt the memories of those past middle life, was really responsible for the advent of modern nursing in America. With the Sanitary Commission of the Civil War will always be associated the names of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Miss Louise M. Schuyler. Miss Dorothea Dix was the Superintendent of Nurses.

Since the foundation ofthat important trio of training schools the profession of nursing has, in America, made advances by leaps and bounds. Training schools have multiplied, standards of admission have been raised; the circle of practical experience in hospital work has been widened; theoretical instruction has been vastly improved; the length of the period of training has been extended; the public has been educated to understand the benefits of trained nursing; and the occupation has attracted more and more women of a superior class. In these advances, the training school of the Johns Hopkins Hospital has played no small part. I wonder how many people fully appreciate the debt this hospital and the country owe to the influence of the first superintendent of our training school, Miss Hampton, and that of her successor, Miss Nutting.

It is surprising how long it has taken the people as a whole, and even, I am sorry to say, physicians, to grasp the idea that a nurse to be efficient must have good powers of observation, an attractive personality, general culture, and a prolonged period of practical and theoretical instruction in nursing and in several subjects closely allied to it. A nurse must know the elements of anatomy, physiology, hygiene and medicine. She must understand the language of the physician with whom she works. She has to learn the names of the skeletal parts, and the position and function of the more important organs of the body; she must be familiar with the principles of hygiene and of nutrition, for a large part of her work consists of attention to the details of personal hygiene and dietetics. It is desirable that she should have at least some practical training in bacteriology, for otherwise is will scarcely be possible for her fully to value the principles of disinfection or the technique of aseptic surgery. The nurse should understand how infectious diseases are contracted, for it lies within her power to prevent many diseases when she understands their origin.

Without some instruction in the subjects just mentioned, serious mistakes are often made. An ignorant nurse has been known to try to stop haemorrhage from a vein at the bend of the elbow after phlebotomy by placing a bandage on the upper arm, and in the old days it was not uncommon to meet with nurses who went, ignorant of the danger, from a scarlet fever patient to a confinement case.

Practical training in nursing can be acquired only in hospital wards. There the nurse quickly becomes familiar with the best methods of bed making, linen-changing, bathing, ventilating, caring for the skin and mucous membranes, feeding patients, encouraging patients, taking temperatures, counting pulse and respirations and collecting specimens for laboratory examinations. In the wards, too, she is trained to observe accurately and to report promptly all important changes in the condition of a patient.

THE DIFFERENCE

"I don't see any difference between you and a trained nurse except the uniform," said her sick husband. "And the salary," she added thoughtfully.

HARPER'S BAZAR

By Dr. LEWELLYS F. BARKER