THE NURSE AS RELATING TO HER OWN TRAINING SCHOOL AND TO HER FELLOW NURSES Always be loyal to your own school and hospital. It may not have been in every respect perfect; but it is not necessary to tell strangers of its imperfections: probably those in authority are just as sensible of its short-comings as you are, and perhaps they work harder than you do to right its wrong; in any case it does no good to tell others of the things you disapproved. It may indeed be that your criticism is one-sided and unfair, that the very rules you hated and found hard to keep are the wisest ones, and, if you let strangers see that you disapprove of these wise regulations, the opinion they will form of your intelligence will certainly not be flattering to you. When you meet other nurses in your work, as you are sure to do, and when you compare your school with the one the other nurse came from, try to realize that the other school is neither wholly above nor wholly below your own; each has probably its own merits and its own drawbacks. You should not tell the other nurse any of your own school's shortcomings, any sooner than you would tell them to any other stranger; be loyal everywhere to the place where you were fitted for your work. Never tell revolting hospital stories to your patients. Some people have the most morbid wish to hear dreadful details. I remember a patient of mine, years ago, asking me in all good faith to tell her the most horrible thing I had ever seen in all my hospital experience. I asked her why she wished to hear such things, and after some reflection she acknowledged that it was a foolish, morbid curiosity. It is best to keep the dreadful side entirely out of sight; there are plenty of bright, interesting, pleasant things always occurring; tell of these. Tell of the cunning little babies in the lying-in ward, the absurd little black ones, the fat little German and Swede babies. Tell of the surly drunken men that come, and how a week of cleanliness in bed, with a broken leg, or it may be a cracked skull, will change them into quiet, polite, pleasant patients; and how, later, they will take their turn at washing dishes, with a docility that would make their wives stupid with amazement. All such matters (and the more you try to think of them, the more you will be able to recall) will amuse and really edify your patient, many of whom think of a hospital only as a place of terror. Never gossip about your sister nurses; of the stupidity of one, the untidiness of another, or the overbearing nature of the third. It can do no good, and it lowers you in the estimation of every one who hears you talk.