Notes on nursing : what it is, and what it is not.

  • Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on nursing : what it is, and what it is not. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.

    25/88 (page 21)
    Monday. Or: At 10 p.^r. I am never with my patient; but quiet is of no less consequence to him at 10 than it was at 5 minutes to 10. Curious as it may seem, this very obvious consideration occurs comparatively to few, or, if it does occur, it is only to cause the devoted friend or nurse to be absent fewer hours or fewer minutes from her patient—not to arrange so as that no minute and no hour shall be for her patient without the essentials of her nursing. A very few instances will be sufficient, not as precepts, but as Illustrations of illustrations. the want of it. A strange washerwoman, coming late at night for the things, Strangers will burst in by mistake to the patient's sick-room, after he has coming into fallen into his first doze, giving him a shock, the effects of which are ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^™* irremediable, though he himself laughs at the cause, and probably never even mentions it. The nurse who is, and is quite right to be, at her supper, has not provided that the washerwoman shall not lose her way and go into the wrong room. The patient's room may always have the window open. But the Sjck room passage outside the patient's room, though provided with several large ^^ng the windows, may never have one open. Because it is not understood ^^ ^° ^ °''^^* that the charge of the sick-room extends to the charge of the passage. And thus, as often happens, the nurse makes it her business to turn the patient's room into a ventilating shaft for the foul air of the whole house. An uninhabited room, a newly painted room,* an uncleaned Uninhabited closet or cupboard, may often become a reservoir of foul air for the ^°^°^ fouling whole house, because the person in charge never thinks of arranging , ^® ^hole that these places shall be always aired, always cleaned; she merely opens the window herself when she goes in. An agitating letter or message may be delivered, or an important l^clivcry and letter or message 7iot delivered ; a visitor whom it was of consequence ^f jg^f ^\^^^a to see, may be refused, or one whom it was of still more consequence messages. 7iot to see may be admitted—because the person in charge has never asked herself this question, AVhat is done when I am not there ? f At all events, one may safely say, a nurse cannot be with the * That excellent paper, the Builder, mentions the lingering of the smell of Lingering paint for a month about a house as a proof of want of ventilation. Certainly— smell of paint and, where there are ample windows to open, and these are never opened to get a want of care. rid of the smell of paint, it is a proof of want of management in using the means of ventilation. Of course the smell will then remain for months. Why should it go ] i Why should you let your patient ever be surprised, except by thieves? I do Why let vour not know. In England, people do not come down the chimney, or through the patient eVer window, unless they are thieves. They come in by the door, and somebody must ]^^, surprised open the door to them. The somebody charged with opening the door is one of two, three, or at most four persons. Why cannot these, at most, four persons be put in charge as to what is to be done when there is a ring at the door bell! The sentry at a post is changed much oftener than any servant at a private house or institution can possibly be. But what should we think of such an excuse a? this: that the enemy had entered such a post because A and not li had been on guard ? Yet I have constantly heard such an excuse made in the private house or institution and accepted : viz., that such a person had been let in or not let in, and such a parcel had been wrongly delivered or lost because A and not B had opened the door !