Subsidiary Notes as to the Introduction of Female Nursing into Military Hospitals in Peace and War by Florence Nightingale

Author:Florence Nightingale [Nightingale, Florence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-09-04T22:00:00+00:00

II.—1. Should it be necessary to serve one Pavilion with one Nurse means by which this could be effected.

II.—1. Suppose the Lariboisière plan retained, as proposed at Aldershot, for a Military Hospital, with wards of twenty-four beds each—then, with fear and trembling, but with the firm conviction that it is better for human nature, most of all, for nursing human nature, to have somewhat too much than a great deal too little to do, I respectfully recommend that one Nurse serve the three wards of each Pavilion.

One woman cannot sleep alone in the Pavilion. The Nurses must sleep together near the Matron’s quarters. If the Nurses sleep away from the wards there should be some way by which a Nurse can at once be summoned, in case of any urgency in her ward, and it would be well to consider this in the distribution of quarters. Either the Matron should lock the Nurses’ quarters at night, and any summons should be brought to her and by her referred to the Nurse; or the summons should go straight to the Nurse’s door. There are difficulties both ways, even supposing these summons should be unfrequent. The Nurse of each Pavilion should inhabit the room on the ground-floor ward, where the heaviest surgical cases will be probably placed, whence she can better command the movements of the Pavilion, and attend the entrance of the Surgeon.

2. Head Nurse’s Day in a Pavilion Hospital.

2. Her day might be something like this (in time, perhaps, God will bless us with some Army Chaplain who will get up early and give us a very short service morning and evening):—

She should be effective, and enter the Pavilion about 6 A.M., go through the wards, read prayers in one by turns at the appointed hour, and give out the linen wanted. (Six is the nominal hour when the Head Nurses of one great London Hospital enter on their duty.) Here must be no nominal hours, all must be real, though not overstrained. Then the dressings, &c., attendance on Surgeons, &c. With 72 patients on different floors, she must train the Orderlies to do the lighter dressings (by training I mean real teaching, not leaving the Orderly to find them out himself); she must see all the wounds of all her wards which she does not dress herself at least every other day (which she can do by seeing some in the morning and some in the evening), and she must dress the heavy cases of all the wards herself. All this, with method, and not losing time by fetching and waiting, an efficient Head Nurse can do.

She must be responsible for the linen of the wards; but this must be simplified as much as can be, so as to secure responsibility, yet relieve the Nurse of unnecessary time spent over it.

The Nurse should be relieved of all writing and counting, on the score of loss of time incurred. It will not do to

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