Part 3 (2/2)

WHY DO NURSES COMPLAIN?

It seems to some of us, judging from the prevailing tone of nurses' conversations, that this is a veritable age of discontent.

We hear that a nurse's life is confining; that it is wearing on the nerves; it keeps one from enjoying society; it is not sufficiently remunerative, etc., etc. We all know, without going into further particulars, what a nurse could complain about, and though each one's tale of woe may be perfectly true, it seems to me we are not wise, as nurses, to allow the trials of our professional life to occupy such a prominent position in our thoughts.

Let us glance at some of the other professions, and see how the members of each regard their chosen work. What is the prevailing theme of the religious newspapers? Is it complaints from the ministers that they are not appreciated, or that their life wears on their nerves? Not that surely, but we read of more and more work to be done; more and more need of the gospel to be preached and lived, that all may be attracted to it. What do we read in the medical journals? Not how often Dr. Jones or Dr. Smith has been called up at night, or how often they have been dismissed or maligned by ungrateful patients; neither do they talk of such things. Do they complain that they are kept from the presence of ”Society?” Not so, and why? Their enthusiasm is such that these matters are accepted as part of the inevitable, and the higher, n.o.bler aim is so real that the lower and meaner consideration of personal comfort sinks into insignificance. What is the soldier's favorite tale? Not that all through the war he had to drink his coffee without cream, that he did not have sheets on his bed, and that he ate from a tin plate. Would he ever speak of such things, except to show that a man can for a n.o.ble aim accept inconvenience, and laugh over it? Yet the soldier has probably been used to these comforts and many more all of his life in his home; but viewed in the light of his enthusiasm for the country he is striving to save, and seen by the side of her peril, such inconveniences sink into their merited nothingness.

Now the profession we have entered is, we are told, a n.o.ble one.

We have been ranked shoulder to shoulder with the doctors, we have been compared to soldiers, we have been a.s.sured that our opportunities for doing good to souls are second only to those of the ministers. What more do we want? We want this, and we want it very much. We want the courage to accept our trials which must come if we are to have any glory. It is all very fine to be called a ministering angel, but it is pleasanter to minister to those who are appreciative. We _can_ be heroic, in an emergency, but if we are not properly thanked, we do like to growl a little. It is gratifying to our vanity to be ranked with our masculine a.s.sociates, but when it comes to the hard, thankless tasks which they accept without a murmur, then we proceed to show that we know what is what, and that our refined tastes cannot be so inconsiderately treated.

The trouble with these fretful nurses is that they _are_ nurses. If they are not satisfied with the profession they have chosen, why do they not make a change and enter some other? Do they not know when they enter the work that it is hard, do they not hear on every side that it is exacting and confining? They knew it perfectly well before they began, why then do they complain? Why not say candidly, ”I cannot have such enthusiasm for my fellow-men that I can forget myself,” and then do something that is easier?

The Superintendent of the training school shows each new aspirant for the nursing profession that the life is not an easy one, that patience is one of the most necessary characteristics for the nurse. She tells her of the trials, the irritations, the unreason, the tiresomeness of sick people, and still women will come to the school, and forgetting the warnings, they will complain when some exasperating incident occurs. If a nurse, from overwork and the consequent weakening of her nervous energy, has lost her patience, she will be a wise woman if she drops out of nursing work for a year or more; this will probably help her, complaining never will.

Do you feel that your patient is cross or unreasonable? That is most likely, and is to be expected in nine cases out of every ten.

Put yourself in your patient's place for a little while; try to realize what it is to have a pain, constant and sickening; to have it every minute of the twenty-four hours; try to imagine the fatigue of a respiration of forty; the ache and restlessness of a fever of 103 degrees; the agony of longing to change a position when it cannot be done; the despair of a hope for recovery growing daily less, or the realization of absolute weakness that comes with early convalescence; try to imagine yourself bearing some of these ills with nerves and brain weakened by disease, and you will not wonder that your patient is irritable, that he thinks the minutes of your absence are ”hours,” that the unevenness of the bed is ”hard lumps,” that the food is ”slops,” and the medicine ”no good.” Remember that he is a prisoner, and he has a cruel jailer; his bed is his prison, his disease is his jailer, and he suffers whatever torments his jailer chooses to inflict. Now prisoners are not, as a rule, a happy cla.s.s of men; so bear with your prisoner and help him. Complaining about his shortcomings will never make them any the less. He is sick. Oh! the pathos of that short sentence, ”He is sick;” that says all. You are well, or you ought to be; therefore bear with him.

You have chosen a hard profession, but we are told it is the n.o.blest one a woman can follow. Why is it n.o.ble? Exactly because it is hard, and the hardness consists in your forgetting yourself and giving your strength to others. There are many hard lives that are not in the least n.o.ble, but there is no n.o.ble life that is not hard. A coal miner has, I suppose, a hard life, yet no one calls it a n.o.ble one; why? Because he works solely for his wages, and he complains and ”strikes” when his wages and his hours do not suit him; but a doctor going from house to house, and in spite of all discouragements carrying cheer and hope; a city missionary going to the degraded, the ignorant, and by his own efforts helping his fellow-men to a better life, to a knowledge of G.o.d--these are n.o.ble lives. You can see I am sure the difference, and you will not gainsay me when I a.s.sure you that the doctor and the missionary, though they may not be satisfied with themselves, or with their manner of working, are happy men, happy because they live outside of themselves. The coal miner who is not content with his wages is miserable, because he himself and his needs loom up before him so large that every thing else is shut out. It is because you take a hard task and do it well, that so much praise is given to nurses. If you undertake a difficult task and fret over it all the time you are doing it, if you propose to benefit your fellow creatures and grumble because you have not comforts, or appreciation, or grat.i.tude, where does the n.o.bility go? Where is the heroism? If the task is easy, agreeable, delightful, the idea of heroism, of n.o.bility, of all high aspiration dies directly. Did any one ever do a grand work and have an easy time while doing it? Did Florence Nightingale have all the comforts of life when she did her great work? Was it not by her indomitable perseverance, her great patience, and her enthusiasm for others that she won such an honored place for herself? You know almost before I say it, that there can be no loftiness of purpose, no enthusiasm, if there are not difficulties to be conquered, and you all know that complaining about sick people will never alter their characteristics, and that complaining about the nervousness of the relatives will never make less unreasoning, when they are fearful that a loved one is going to die.

Do we want grat.i.tude and appreciation? We get it very often, and very often we do not; and when this last is the case, we may reflect that we are in very good company. How did the French reward Joan of Arc? The warmth of their grat.i.tude led her to the stake. Galileo, as reward for his discovery, was put into prison and loaded with chains, as were also Christopher Columbus and Sir Walter Raleigh, a notable company these, and every one suffered from the ingrat.i.tude of their fellow-men. Many more examples you must call to mind, of ingrat.i.tude more base than any thing we shall ever be called upon to bear.

The profession of nursing is still one of the most recent that women have engaged in. The world had until the past few decades been so used to being nursed by the old-fas.h.i.+oned nurse, who was a servant, and who never expected any treatment but that of a servant, that it has taken some years to always remember that we are not servants, in the usual acceptation of the term; but no one will be convinced of the fact that we are ladies by our _telling_ them so. If you are a lady, with a lady's refinement, every one in the house will know it, will feel it, and you will never mention the subject; they must feel it, then there will be no arguing on the subject. It must be demonstrated by your deftness, your quietness, your cheerfulness, your education, your intelligence, your quick appreciation of other good qualities. We must all of us show the world that it is being nursed by its compeers, that a lady can do even the most revolting service in a way that robs it of its difficulties; and when the hard part of the illness is over, when your patient is ready and anxious to be entertained, you can show that you are not a machine for carrying out the doctor's orders; that you are capable of something more than the ability to take temperature, pulse, and respiration.

We must remember that even yet we are, in a way, pioneers of one part of that great woman movement in the world. It is not enough to educate one family up to the realization that we are its equals; the next house we go to, the same work may have to be done over again; but each time it is done, and done well, the whole profession has been benefited, which is an aim worth striving for.

VIII

THE NURSE AS A TEACHER

It does not occur to every nurse, when she graduates, that she has been preparing herself, during all these strenuous years of study and hospital work, for the life of a teacher. She fondly imagines that she is a nurse, and only that; but after she has been doing private duty for a year or more, she realizes that she is generally a teacher as well as a nurse, and that often she is a missionary also.

Perhaps no private duty nurse needs to be told what subject she must teach; the patient or the patient's friends never let her rest until she has told the ”why” of every thing she does, or does not. There are, however, some important subjects that the nurse- teacher should try to make very clear to every patient.

We will begin with the baby, as the babies are with us always, and if doctors and nurses, science and sanitation have their way, there will some time be no call but that of the baby, for nurse or doctor either. The ignorance of the young mother is proverbial; her wish to know about her baby and its care is pathetically earnest. The new life is so precious, she would take such good care of it, if she only knew how. Here is a pupil eager for knowledge, ready to do all that can be intelligently taught to her. The nurse should have very clearly in her mind all the mysteries of digestion, all the reasons for regularity in feeding, the necessity for fresh air, for long and uninterrupted slumber, for loose clothing, for regular bathing. She should be able to give the mother the rules for her own living that she may be able to provide the best milk for the baby, or, if the little one has to be artificially fed, the methods of preparing the particular food chosen should be explained, and the indications of indigestion pointed out. All this is real teaching, real missionary work, and if well done will help the mother immensely and probably save the baby many attacks of colic or worse. Was.h.i.+ng the baby is usually regarded by the young mother as a terrible ordeal. No nurse should leave her young-mother patient until she is fully able to perform this task. Let the mother watch, a few mornings, while the nurse does all the work, then let her undress the baby, when the nurse can take him and finish the operation.

Day by day let her do a little more, as her strength and ambition permit, until at the end of a week she is fairly used to handling the child and can, perhaps, keep him until the last finis.h.i.+ng touches are put on. The nurse should always be near, to help, to advise, to take the child should the mother become exhausted.

Finally, she should go into another room, and, leaving all things ready, allow the mother to perform the duty by herself, letting her know that at any time she will be relieved if necessary. In this way the mother becomes accustomed to the child, and the bath is always a pleasure to her. How many times have we heard pathetic stories of a young mother trying for the first time to wash the baby?--the tears of despair, the nervous blunders, the exhaustion when the performance was brought to a hasty close. All such stories mean that the nurse in charge was not a teacher and that her work when she left the case was not completed.

Suppose that this baby is the third or fourth, the mother knows what to do for the new little one, but how about the others? She is still anxious to do what is right, or perhaps she is not anxious, and her att.i.tude toward the children is not what it should be. Perhaps she does not realize that she will be called to account for these souls intrusted to her care, that these bodies will do their part in life, well or ill, as she treats them wisely or foolishly. Here is true missionary work. A thoughtful, intelligent, judicious nurse can show a mother that an adenoid may be responsible for Johnny's inattention, as it causes dullness of hearing, how Mary's fretfulness is caused by too little sleep or by insufficient ventilation of her room at night. She can explain how irregular eating causes the children to be cross and irritable. She can show why the first teeth should be removed when the second begin to push towards the gum. She can teach the mother that the headaches so often met with, in children who go to school, are due, perhaps, to eye strain, and can not be corrected with pills, and should never be soothed with headache powders. She can show the evils of the gallons of soda water too many young women swallow, of the injudiciousness of allowing young girls to congregate in drug stores. These last two evils, ”soda water and the drug store habit,” the mother may know nothing about. She is busy at home with the ”little ones,” and the fourteen- or sixteen- year-old girl only too often is allowed to wander off ”down town”

with other young girls, and what she does there would astonish many a mother.

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