Practical hints on district nursing / by Amy Hughes.

  • Hughes, Amy.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical hints on district nursing / by Amy Hughes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the mainspring of the whole, and comes even before her nursing abiHties. The three main essentials of a good district nurse may be briefly summed up as :— 1. IntelHgent obedience to doctors' orders. 2. Love of the work. 3. Common sense. Loyalty to Doctors. Without loyalty and obedience to her superior officers, the doctors for whom she works, a nurse is worse than useless. It does not seem to occur to those who disregard orders given them and apply their own remedies, that such conduct is dishonourable. The cases are under the doctor's care, and he is responsible for them ; the nurse is there to carry out the treatment, and failure to do this becomes untrustworthiness. However skilled a nurse may be, she cannot have the same practical knowledge of the con- ditions of the body in health and disease as the medical man, who gives years of study to qualify for his profession. Yet too often the diagnosis is doubted, the treatment questioned with the audacity of inexperience. It is quite true a district nurse has often to work under practitioners who do not interest themselves greatly in their patients nor use the best possible means for their relief; but that is not her