The Nurse and Womanly Sympathy

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume III, Issue 1, 1 January 1910, Page 33

The Nurse and Womanly Sympathy

Sister Cecilia

By

In an otherwise delightful article m the October number of Kai Tiaki, there is an assertion that some nurses lose their womanly sympathy m a course of hospital training. Such an opinion, coming from so erudite a source, might well make a good woman hesitate to enter a hospital training school. It is utter fallacy to blame the training. Sympathy can no more be lost m training than it can be acquired by volitional effort. It comes naturally to most women — to some, not at all. No system of inculcation can bestow or destroy it. That there are some trained nurses lacking m sympathy is unhappily true. They never had the power to feel compassion. The defect was always there — a natural one — unrecognised, perhaps, by themselves or their friends. They have politeness, and sufficient unselfishness7to meet the common needs of social life. As probationers, with little responsibility, they pass muster. Only m the advanced course, m positions calling for the exercise of tact and sympathy, does the previous defect become apparent to the superintendent. Too late ! Something may be done to cultivate sympathy and tact m the case of a student nurse, who is a keen observer, by placing her with a senior devoted to the work, and naturally adapted to it, but she will never obtain that confidence and happy relation with her patients that her sympathetic sister wins. She is not to

blame — neither is the hospital training to blame — any more than if it left her still without a taste for music ! The womanly woman, who enters witli the true spirit of compassion, leaves the hospital more sympathetic, more tolerant, more selfsacrificing than she entered. Her emotions are less on the surface — they are under control. Her love of humanity is increased a hundred-fold through her faithful care of many a damaged life. If it be not so, blame not the hospital course, but the person. The true nursing spirit is akin to the maternal instinct. There are mothers — occasionally — who lack the maternal affection, and who would say it is because they have had the care of children ? To prevent the compassionless nurse is one of the responsibilities of the superintendent. It demands besides, a keen personal observation, and frequent close contact with the probationer ; opportunity to put her m a fairly responsible position. To this end the term of trial might well be extended to last a year. The test — at least some test of character is the use of authority, and it is not generally possible to apply that test during the first three months. No examination will assist m this, and beyond and above all other qualifications, the nurse must possess the spirit of compassion — of self-sacrifice ; then only can the years of her training leave her a woman worthy of her high calling.