The Unwelcome Nurse: Her Demands on Household Servants

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume III, Issue 2, 1 April 1910, Page V

The Unwelcome Nurse : Her Demands on Household Servants

[From the " Daily Mail," I/mdon. July, 1909.] The unpopularity in private houses of the trained nurse, a professional problem which the Nursing Congress, now being held in TvOndon, has courageously tackled, continues to be a fruitful topic of conversation among people who have had to open their doors to this generally unwelcome guest. ' No doubt wealthy people, who have a staff of servants and a large house, find it possible to endure the presence of a trained nurse in their homes/' said a housewife of the middle class yesterday. " They isolate her by giving her a suite of rooms and a maid to attend to her wants, and under these circumstances the patient gets the full benefit of her nursing skill and experience without any of that irritation which comes from constant bickerings between the nurse and the servants. ' If nurses would only realise that there is no loss of dignity in poking the fire, or boil-

ing a kettle of hot water when required, instead of ringing for an overworked servant, who may have to toil up two or three flights of stairs, one would not hear so many complaints' of the trouble nurses give. I really do not see, either, why a nurse should regard the making of her own bed as almost a breach of professional etiquette." [We do not think our nurses in New Zealand have the opportunity or, we hope, the inclination, to demand so much service as this. Ed.]