The present crisis at Guy's Hospital.

  • Lonsdale, Margaret.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The present crisis at Guy's Hospital. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    1880. /3 THE PRESENT&&SIS* AW GUY'S HOSPITAL. The affairs of one of our largest hospitals are at this present time occupying an unusual share of public attention among Londoners generally, and among medical men particularly. The struggle now going on at Guy's Hospital, and which may be shortly stated to be a difference of opinion between the Treasurer and the Medical Staff as to the way in which the nursing in the hospital shall for the future be conducted, and which has been referred to the Governors of the Institution for final settlement, is not by any means one of the merely local and passing storms by which from time to time all large in- stitutions contaiuing men with conflicting interests bound up more or less in those institutions are convulsed. The matter ought, I think, to be looked upon as having a wider significance than is generally supposed. It is not a mere quarrel over the patients in Guy's Hospital; in point of fact it is rather a typical struggle, showing symptoms of a combined and resolute attempt on the part of the medical profession generally to retain the old system of employing untrained women as nurses in our hospitals, instead of making use of the trained labour which is now at their disposal in this special branch of work. In the largest institution of the kind, the London Hospital, the old system is still in full force, and until November last it was main- tained in Guy's Hospital. Perhaps it may be well to state what con- stitutes the difference between the old and the new systems of nursing. Until comparatively lately our hospitals have been nursed by women drawn mainly from ths class to which the domestic char- woman belongs, who, having received no kind of training whatever, were, perhaps, first taken into the hospital, after a superficial inquiry, or no inquiry at all, had been made into their character, in the position of scrubber or ward-maid, in order that they might see and learn, as well as they could, what went on there ; or perhaps they were received at very small pay, or none, as a probationer or assistant nurse, to help in the work of nursing patients. At the end of three months, less or more, according to the convenience of the matron, and at the recom- mendation probably of the head nurse or sister of the ward, these women would be promoted to the position of head nurses themselves—having learnt, it is true, all that their superiors were able to teach them ahout the art of nursing, but being totally without experience of their own. Physically and morally untrained as they were, they were then immediately liable to be put in charge of patients who were more or less seriously ill, by day or by night as the case might be ; the main duty which was inculcated on them from their first