Workhouse Nursing: The story of a successful experimentNightingale, Florence
History
Workhouse Nursing: The story of a successful experiment
Nightingale, Florence
Nursing; Poor -- Medical care
1. Your Committee are of opinion that the substitution throughout
the Workhouse Hospital of trained nurses, for the present pauper
nurses, would involve a direct expenditure of from 2,000_l._ to
2,500_l._ per annum. Should it be decided, in the first instance, to
introduce the nurses into the male hospital only, it is probable
that a sum of 800_l._ per annum would be found sufficient for the
purpose. Evidence has been laid before the Committee to show that in
those hospitals where the improved system of nursing has been
introduced, the increased cost thereof has been more than
compensated for by the saving, from the reduction of the time during
which the patients are under treatment—the effect, as is alleged, of
good and efficient nursing. Whilst your Committee admit the force of
the argument, that if this be so in the case of hospitals, where the
sick only are burdens upon the funds of the institution, much more
must it be so in the case of the parish, where, as often happens,
the whole family are chargeable upon the rates in consequence of the
sickness of its head; they think it necessary to point out that one
great difference between the workhouse hospital and an ordinary
infirmary consists in this, that while in the latter (as a rule)
none but acute and supposed curable cases are admitted, the former
is, in many cases, the refuge of those who, as incurables, cannot
gain admittance to other asylums. There can, however, be no doubt
that the saving resulting from the rapidity and completeness of the
cures effected by good nursing, will be a considerable set-off
against the increased cost of the nursing staff; though your
Committee can offer no decided opinion as to the probable extent of
the saving so effected.
2. Your Committee believe that accommodation equal at least, if not
superior, to that afforded to the nurses in the London hospitals,
can be provided in the Workhouse at a moderate outlay. It is
estimated that, for the male hospital, a sum of from 400_l._ to
500_l._ would suffice to provide the rooms and to furnish them.
3. With reference to the supply of suitable nurses, your Committee
have to report that, as the authorities of the Nightingale Training
School for nurses have offered to render to the Select Vestry all
the assistance in their power in obtaining trained nurses, no great
difficulty on this point need be apprehended.
Were your Committee as sanguine as some of the hospital authorities
whom they have consulted, as to the happy results to be expected
from the introduction of trained nurses into the Workhouse, they
would at once, with the utmost confidence, recommend that the whole
of the hospital should, at the cost of the parish, be supplied with
this class of officers; but, looking upon it as they do, as an
experiment (at least in its economical results), they unanimously
recommend that the system should, in the first instance, be tried in
the male hospital.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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