Nursing Novels

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume XI, Issue 2, 1 April 1918, Page 104

Nursing Novels

' Days of Probation," by Louise Gerard. This novel, which, according to the " Daily Telegraph," Sydney, dealing With a subject with Which the author is thoroughly famiiar, is one of a class of books which has flourished exceedingly during the war. The nursing profession has come greatly into the limelight and it appears that some observers do not quite like the halo which has been thrown, around some of its heroines, and have set themselves to show the reverse of the pictures which show the nurse ai a ministering angel. We wish, for the sake of a much enduring profession which seeks neither the elevation to sainthood nor its reverse, that there could be a censorship of hospital novels. Such books as the one We have just read can do no good . They do not, We believe, show a true pic-

ture of hospital life, and the incidents given by the Writer of jealousy and intrigue, of pursuit of house doctors by probationers and nurses, of dining out and theatre going, do not play a large part m the lives of the Women who enter to study for the profession. A few, no doubt, deserve the picture shown, but the great majority love their Work, are interested m their patients, absorbed m their studies, friendly with their fellow nurses (no friendships endure like those We form at hospital), and too busy to carry on the " unedifying intrigues " set forth m the book. Women who have groWii up, m the greater part, m refined homes do not leave all their good breeding behind them, and Well managed hospitals do not so far abandon all the refinements of home as shown here.