Subsidiary Notes as to the Introduction of Female Nursing into Military Hospitals in Peace and WarNightingale, Florence
History
Subsidiary Notes as to the Introduction of Female Nursing into Military Hospitals in Peace and War
Nightingale, Florence
Military hospitals -- Great Britain; Nurses -- Great Britain
It is a great comfort that the Hospital staff returns to soldiers. We
shall get on infinitely better with them than we could have done with
the late Medical Staff Corps, though, after all, in the long run, we
should manage with them too. If only God helps us with the sort of
women required, thoroughly efficient Nurses, laborious active women,
discreet as well as well-conducted, and aware (a little) of the sort
of work and place, they are in!--let us trust this to Him, when the
time comes, and depend upon it, to give each Nurse plenty to do will
become one great means of forming such women--provided, which must be
strenuously kept in view, they are made to do it.
[Sidenote: 4. Importance of Lifts.]
4. It is very important to have the system of lifts throughout the
Hospital, although here, as throughout, the plan of Pavilions renders
them much more requisite, and makes them work less efficiently than
the block plan. Lifts, to carry meals and medicine, linen, coals, &c.,
&c., to and from the first and second floor wards, are very preferable
to the Orderlies carrying them up and down. One sort of load ought
certainly not to be brought up and down by lifts, but to be carried up
and down by men, viz., coffins and the dead. Using the lift for this
purpose (as is done in one Civil Hospital) is on all and every account
thoroughly objectionable.
The system of lifts is the more important, because although there is
no objection to the washing of tea cups, drinking cups, and medicine
vessels at the sink in the scullery, it is certainly neither necessary
nor safe to wash the dinner dishes close to the sick wards. By a little
arrangement, the whole of these could be removed by lifts to a scullery
beside the kitchen, and there cleansed and set aside for next day’s use.
[Sidenote: III.--1. Casualty Wards for noisy and offensive cases should
be separate from the ordinary Wards, and under a completely-appointed
Staff of their own--both for Sanitary and administrative reasons.]
III.--1. Sanitary necessities can never be interfered with. The
concentrating offensive and noisy cases together, while entirely
separating them from each other, in a completely appointed set of
wards, is a far more efficient working thing than appending a small
ward to each ward.
St. Thomas’s (a very admirable Hospital in very many things) has a
casualty ward (for such cases) for men and one, adjoining but separate,
for women, under the charge of one Sister. Baths are in the wards.
Guy’s had the same provision with, however, the drawback that there was
not a Sister in charge, but a Nurse over other Nurses, with higher pay,
but not a Sister or Head Nurse. However excellent such a Nurse may be,
every ward _must_ be under the same regular government as is general in
the Hospital, if discipline and order are not to suffer. Every ward or
set of wards should be under a completely appointed staff.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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