This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 Excerpt: ...of the general movement. It is important to our purpose, however, to emphasize the fact that these early schools were started with the primary purpose of educating women for the subsequent practice of private nursing. An essential part of the plan was a separate home for the student nurses, where they should receive ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 Excerpt: ...of the general movement. It is important to our purpose, however, to emphasize the fact that these early schools were started with the primary purpose of educating women for the subsequent practice of private nursing. An essential part of the plan was a separate home for the student nurses, where they should receive instruction in the domestic arts, under a matron employed by the directors of the school. The student nurses were to serve in the hospitals in order to gain necessary experience. The hospitals at first, and particularly their medical and surgical staffs, strenuously objected to this employment of pupil nurses. But the great advantages of such nursing soon became so apparent that the hospitals themselves began to establish nursing schools, and the converted doctors gave unstinted service as teachers. In order to understand this movement it is necessary to look back at the previous nursing service of the hospitals. In the first report of the New York State Charities' Aid Association, dated December 23, 1872, regarding the nursing service in the Bellevue Hospital, it is said: "The nurses, inadequate in number to the work, nearly all illiterate, some immoral, and others intemperate, had sought these positions simply as a means of livelihood, and not because they had any aptitude for or knowledge of their profession. These women constantly neutralized the efforts of the physicians by their ignorance, and their indifference to the welfare of their patients.... The visitors of the Association could not patiently witness the ignorance and brutality which daily fell under their eyes." This is bad enough evidence, but earlier testimony is even worse, when profligate women were condemned in the police courts, either to jail, or, if they preferred...
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