THE TRAINED NURSE

Evening Star, Issue 21719, 14 May 1934, Page 11

THE TRAINED NURSE

A NOBLE HERITAGE DOCTOR'S ADVICE TO THE PROFESSION . Speaking yesterday in; Knox Church in connection with National Hospital Week, Dr W. Newlands, referring to the work of trained nurses, said: “ Realise, then, nurses, how noble is your heritage and how strenuously yon must live, even from your earliest days of probation, in order worthily to serve your turn of duty. Service is your watchword, and you must strive to tit yourselves to render service. Diligence in your studies, cultivation daily of your observing and reasoning powers, training in the dexterous application of nursing methods and technique, and, above all, single-minded honesty ih thought and word and deed—these are the indispensable . pre-requisites of a worth-while nursing . career. Strive, too, to use your leisure wisely for healthful recreation. Physical fitness and sanity of outlook are essential. How helpful to the patient is the presence of a nurse with pleasing personality, with suggestion of reserve force and poise, and the calm of conscious, but unobtrusive, strength. Such an influence is more potent for healing than medicine. As auxiliaries of the healing craft, your activities involve not money or property, but human health and life. This is no cause for, fear to an efficient nurse, but is great cause for unremitting care and conscientiousness to the limits of your skill, and remember that your calling dignifies and sanctifies even the humblest, nay, even the most revolting task. For you nothing in your work can be common or unclean. On the other hand, never hesitate in any case when more is asked of you than your training justifies, as often happens, to give the reply of the trained soldier, ‘That is not my job, and I do not profess to know it, though I do know .my own.’ This does not mean unwillingness to do your best when more appropriate help is not available, and it is an attitude that will often rescue you from a false position, while detracting not at all from your real'merit. “The opportunities for good of a nurse among the people, are enormous, and her ‘ mana ’ very great. Read of it in ‘God in the Slums,’ ‘ Flynn of the Inland,’ the story of the Victorian bush-nursing service; learn the activities of the great nursing sisterhoods connected with the Christian Churches —Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Salvation Army, and you realise in what high reverence the peoples hold this service of dedication to which you belong, for its. ministration to broken bodies and minds, and its propagation of the ways to health. “For over one-third of a century I have been in constant attendance at hospitals, and much in contact there and in private practice with the life and work of nurses, and I can appreciate and support the-words of Miss Adelaide Nutting, of John. Hopkins Hospital, in her address, entitled The

Apprenticeship to Duty,’ where she says:; ‘ More than half my working We has been spent in a great hospital, and I have become familiar with many others. I have found in them, and particularly among nurses, the purest unselfishness, the sternest devotion to duty, the simplest and most unanected bravery, and the richest traditions or service that I have ever known. It the nurses of the future work as loyally, courageously, and steadfastly, it they hold before them the vision ot what nursing should be as faithfully as their sisters of the. past have, done, nursing will indeed come into her own.”