The educational value of the trained nurse / by W. Gilman Thompson.

  • Thompson, W. Gilman (William Gilman), 1856-1927.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The educational value of the trained nurse / by W. Gilman Thompson. 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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    social value in the community, in addition to their strictly medical functions. It is difficult to obtain more than a very gen- eral estimate of the amount of money in- vested in the schools, for while many of them possess independent buildings, the majority still occupy quarters within the hospital, and in other cases new school buildings are undergoing construction. I think it a conservative estimate to say that fully $10,000,000 is at present in- vested in the housing of this army of nurses. Within the past month two new nurses’ homes have been opened in New York City alone—one for the Bellevue school, costing, with its land and furnish- ings, over $700,000, and one at the Met- ropolitan Hospital on Blackwell’s Island, costing, without the land, $350,000. In that city also, within the past decade, three other school buildings have been erected, one costing $500,000 and the others $300,000 or $400,000 each. Hence the training of nurses involves to-day a very large financial outlay, and the in- terest on the investment, together with cost of maintenance, reaches several mil- lions annually. But the community re- ceives its financial return many times over in the value of the lives which are saved through the improved care which the sick receive. I have dwelt upon these statistics not alone because they are interesting in themselves, but because they suggest topics to which you may well give special thought upon the eve of your graduation —topics connected with the broader aspects of your work and your influence in the community. I do not refer to the purely technical side of your training, nor to what is sometimes denoted as the “sentimental” aspect of nursing—the power to relieve illness and suffering— but rather to what may be called the educational factor of the trained nurse. Twenty-two thousand persons devoted simultaneously to any honorable calling constitute a formidable influence for good when they choose so to exert them- selves, which may be much enhanced by the maintenance of a lofty esprit du corps. The nurse, by virtue of her peculiar in- timacy with patients during a long period of convalescence, is often subjected to a cross-examination regarding all man- ner of medical topics, while the anxious family, during earlier hours of critical anxiety, may endeavor to obtain from her information which the physician, in liis relatively brief calls, has often, for the best of reasons, failed to amplify or, per- haps, to impart at all. While nothing can be more reprehensible in a nurse than meddlesome criticism in matters of which she possesses at best merely the most superficial knowledge, or a tendency to relate her experiences with individual cases—in other words, to talk details of “shop”—there is, nevertheless, open to her a wide educational field, in which she may exert very beneficial influence if she take a broad-minded view of her calling. The public has expended large sums upon her education, housing and maintenance through a period of years, and this obligation she can best repay by adherence to a lofty conception of her vocation. I would urge you to remember that you are important members of a great guild consecrated to the evolution of a science devoted more strictly and immediately than any other to the relief 01 mankind. Dr. Cabot, in answer to the question, “What forces are there in the profession of medicine that tend to bring out the best in those who practice it?” mentions