Practical hints on district nursing / by Amy Hughes.

  • Hughes, Amy
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    the credit is due of having organised a system of district nursing by educated women duly trained as hospital nurses, who were also specially trained in nursing the poor in their own homes. Nursing the people in their homes is much more difficult than is generally supposed, and involves wider and deeper questions than are usually taken into consideration. It should be understood at the beginning that there is no sentimentality about district nursing. Those who take it up with such an idea are not only disappointed themselves, but do harm to the work. It is really a question of practical economy, the supply of a demand which increases with knowledge of its needs. If the work be continued on right principles it will become a power in the land, and, therefore, its ultimate results, as well as its present effects, must be duly considered. It must be entirely free from all pauperising influences. Free nurs- ing of the poor at home need be no more pre- judicial in this respect than is free nursing in hospital, and its moral influence can be made to extend much further, benefiting not only the patients, but their friends and their homes. The power of keeping a home together, when the alternative is the workhouse, is a social question with far-reaching consequences. To shorten the bread-winner’s illness by proper attention to the