Practical hints on district nursing / by Amy Hughes.

  • Hughes, Amy.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical hints on district nursing / by Amy Hughes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    doctor's orders, to save mothers of families from life-long effects of ignorance and neglect, to teach the proper management of infants and children, are gains to the community at large. Nurse not Almoner. The district nurse is a new element in the problem of dealing with poverty and pauperism en tnasse, and her position is hardly yet defined. It has been clouded by the abuse of charity, and to ensure future success the work must be done without suspicion of almsgiving—the hardest lesson to learn, not only for the nurse, but for those wishful to extend the work. The temptations to give relief are so many— personal friends send money to spend on the cases, charitable people offer to provide whatever is needed, the patients appear so destitute that it seems cruel to refrain. But the nurse must learn to look for the cause of the distress, and let her impressions be guided and corrected by those who study these matters, and whose experience enables them to form a more correct judgment. Doubtless immediate necessaries for the patient are essential, but whenever possible, the friends should be at some trouble to obtain them rather than the nurse should be expected to do so. The true way to help the poor is to teach them to help themselves.