I. Hospital-Nurses.
Definite Objects: road to them to be found out.
1. It would appear desirable to consider that definite objects are to be attained; and that the road leading to them is to a large extent to be found out—therefore to consider all plans and rules, for some time to come, as in a great measure tentative and experimental.
Presumed Main Object.
2. The main object I conceive to be, to improve hospitals, by improving hospital-nursing; and to do this by improving, or contributing towards the improvement, of the class of hospital-nurses, whether nurses or head-nurses.
Presumed Intentions.
3. This I propose doing, not by founding a Religious Order; but by training, systematizing, and morally improving as far as may be permitted, that section of the large class of women supporting themselves by labour, who take to hospital-nursing for a livelihood,—by inducing, in the long run, some such women to contemplate usefulness, and the service of God in the relief of man, as well as maintenance, and by incorporating with both these classes a certain proportion of gentlewomen who may think fit to adopt this occupation without pay, but under the same rules, and on the same strict footing of duty performed under definite superiors. These two latter elements, if efficient (if not, they would be mischievous rather than useless), I consider would elevate and leaven the mass.
Religious Orders.
4. It may or may not be desirable to incorporate into the work, either temporarily or permanently, members of Religious Orders, whether English or Roman Catholic, or both, who may, with the consent of their Superiors, enter hospitals nursed under the above system, upon the definite understanding of entire obedience to secular authorities in secular matters, and of abstinence from proselytism.
Their Advantages.
5. Great and undoubted advantages as to character, decorum, order, absence of scandal, protection against calumny, together with, generally speaking, security for some amount of religious fear, love, and self-sacrifice, are found in the system of female Religious Orders.
Advantages of Hired Labour.
6. On the other hand, the majority of women in all European countries are, by God’s providence, compelled to work for their bread, and are without vocation for Orders.
In England the channels of female labour are few, narrow, and over-crowded. In London and in all large towns, there are accordingly a large number of women who avowedly live by their shame; a larger number who occupy a hideous border-land, working by day and sinning by night; and a large number, whether larger or smaller than the latter class is a doubtful problem, who preserve their chastity, and struggle through their lives as they can, on precarious work and insufficient wages. Vicious propensities are in many cases the cause, remediless by the efforts of others, of the two first classes: want of work, insufficient wages, the absence of protection and restraint, are the cause in many more.
Perhaps the work most needed now is rather to aim at alleviating the misery, and lessening the opportunities and the temptations to gross sin, of the many; than at promoting the spiritual elevation of the few, always supposing that this latter object is best effected in an Order.
At any rate, to promote the honest employment, the decent maintenance and provision, to protect and to restrain, to elevate in purifying, so far as may be permitted, a number, more or less, of poor and virtuous women, is a definite and large object of useful aim, whether success be granted to it or not.
The Orders remain for the reception of those women who either are or believe themselves drawn to enter them, or who experience their need of them.
Main Object of Hospitals: Distinct Functions of Hospital Clergy and Hospital Nurses.
7. The care of the sick is the main object of hospitals. The care of their souls is the great province of the clergy of hospitals. The care of their bodies is the duty of the nurses. Possibly this duty might be better fulfilled by religious nurses than by Sisters of any Order; because the careful, skilful, and frequent performance of certain coarse, servile, personal offices is of momentous consequence in many forms of severe illness and severe injury, and prudery, a thing which appears incidental, though not necessarily so, to Female Orders, is adverse to or incompatible with this.
Objections to Amalgamating Members of Orders with Secular Nurses.
8. Grave and peculiar difficulties attend the incorporation of members of Orders, especially of Roman Catholic Orders, into the work. And, both with reference to the Queen’s hospitals, and still more to the civil hospitals, I humbly submit that much thought, and some consultation with a few impartial and judicious men, should precede the experiment of their introduction. This appears to me one of the most important questions for decision. Should it be decided in favor of their introduction, I trust it may be resolved to do so only tentatively and experimentally.
I confess that, subject to correction or modification from further experience or information, my belief, the result of much anxious thought and actual experience, is, that their introduction is certain to effect far more harm in some ways than it can effect good in others; that a great part of the advantages of the system of Orders is lost when their members are partially incorporated in a secular, and therefore, as they consider, an inferior system; and that their incorporation, especially as regards the Roman Catholic Sisters, will be a constant source of confusion, of weakness, of disunion, and of mischief.
Saint Vincent de Paule well knew mankind, when he imposed, amongst other things, the rule on the Sisters of his Order never to join in any work of charity with the Sisters of any other Order. This rule was mentioned to me on an occasion which gave it weight, by the Superior of the Sisters of Charity of one of the two Sardinian Hospitals on the Heights of Balaklava, in the spring of 1856, and by the Mère Générale at Paris, October 1854, when she was solicited by me, with the assent and sanction, both of the English and of the French Governments, to grant some of her Sisters to us at Scutari.
Ladies
9. As regards ladies, not members of Orders, peculiar difficulties attend their admission: yet their eventual admixture to a certain extent in the work is an important feature of it. Obedience, discipline, self-control, work understood as work, hospital service as implying masters, civil and medical, and a mistress, what service means, and abnegation of self, are things not always easy to be learnt, understood, and faithfully acted upon, by ladies. Yet they cannot fail in efficiency of service or propriety of conduct—propriety is a large word—without damaging the work, and degrading their element. Their dismissal (like that of Sisters) must always be more troublesome, if not more difficult than that of the other nurses.
It might be better not to invite this element; to let it come if it will learn, understand, and do what has to be learnt, understood, and done: if not, it is better away.
It appears to me, but I may be quite mistaken, that, in the beginning, many such persons will offer themselves, but few persevere; that in time a sufficient number will form an important element of the work; more is not desirable.
It seems to me important that ladies, as such, should have no separate status; but should be merged among the head-nurses, by whatever name these are called. Thus efficiency would be promoted, sundry things would be checked, and the leaven would circulate.
There are many women, daughters and widows of the middle classes, who would become valuable acquisitions to the work, but whose circumstances would compel them to find their maintenance in it. These persons would be far more useful, less troublesome, would blend better and more truly with women of the higher orders, who were in the work, and would influence better and more easily the other nurses, as head-nurses, than as ladies. Whether or not the better judgment of others agrees with mine, my meaning will be understood.
In truth the only lady in a hospital should be the chief of the women, whether called Matron or Superintendent. The efficiency of her office requires that she should rank as a lady and an officer of the hospital. At the same time, I think it important that every Matron and Superintendent, (unless during war-service, when the rough-and-ready life and work required will probably be best undergone by women of a higher class) should be a person of the middle classes, and if she requires and receives a salary, so much the better. She will thus disarm one source of opposition and jealousy, and enough will remain, inseparable from her office.
The quasi-spiritual dignity of Sisters of Mercy is a thing sui generis. But the real and faithful discharge of the duties of the wards of a General Hospital, whether with reference to superiors, companions, or patients, is incompatible with the status, as such, of ladies. The real dignity of a gentlewoman is a very high and unassailable thing, which silently encompasses her from her birth to her grave. Therefore, I can conceive no woman who knows, either from information or from experience, what hospital duties are, not feeling as strongly as I do, that either the assertion or the reception of the status as such of a lady, is against every rule and feeling of common sense, of the propriety of things, and of her own dignity.
Religion.
10. The question of the mode of Religion is an all-important one, and the choice of a mode bears far more directly upon this work than may, at first sight, appear. To give up the common ground of membership of the National Church is to give up a great source of strength.
St. John’s House.
St. John’s House, if it steers clear of the rock of prudery, undoubtedly possesses great advantages over a system of hospital nursing by promiscuous instruments. Not because it includes a Sisterhood, a system, in which I, for one, humbly but entirely disbelieve; but because the laborious, servile, anxious, trying drudgery of real hospital work (and to be anything but a nuisance it must ever remain a very humble and very laborious drudgery), requires, like every duty, if it is to be done aright, the fear and love of God. And in practice, apart from theory, no real union can ever be formed between sects. The work now proposed, however, must essentially forbear to avail itself of the bond of union of the National Church.
Only Women of Unblemished Character should be employed.
11. None but women of unblemished character should be suffered to enter the work, and any departure from chastity should be visited with instant final dismission. All applications on behalf of late inmates of penitentiaries, reformatories, of all kinds and descriptions, should be refused. The first offence of dishonesty, and, at the very furthest, the third offence of drunkenness, should ensure irreversible dismissal. No nurse dismissed, from whatever cause, should be suffered to return.
Provision for Old Age.
12. It is very important, if possible, to make provision for the disabled age of deserving nurses. It does not seem to me, I speak very diffidently, desirable to concentrate them in one or more large buildings. I believe half the inmates of half the alms-houses, &c., are not on speaking terms with each other. John Bull is of a peculiar idiosyncrasy: nowhere are there such homes as in England, but life in community does not seem congenial here. A pension and the option of ending their days in solitary quiet, or with some friend or relation, would probably be the most comfortable arrangement for nurses.
Progressive Increase of Wages.
13. Many women are valuable as nurses, who are yet unfit for promotion to head-nurses. It appears to me that it would be very desirable to have an intermediate recompense: say, after ten years’ good service, to raise nurses’ wages; after a second ten years, to raise them further.
Fixed Age for Admission and Retirement.
14. There should be an age for the reception and for the retirement both of nurses and head-nurses. I think no head-nurse should be under thirty.
Simplicity of Rules, Definition of Authorities.
15. Simplicity of rules, placing the nurses, in some respects, absolutely under the Medical man, and, in others, absolutely under the Female Superintendent, is very important; also, at the outset, to have a clear and recorded definition of these respective limits.
Economy.
16. Economy is very important, with regard to the eventual extension of the work.
Commencement: Training.
17. In the event of the nurses not being trained in Her Majesty’s service, advantage, it seems to me, would attend their beginning in a great established hospital; unless indeed it should be judged best to select and train a staff of nurses first in a smaller and quieter one. Yet much that would be unpleasant in the larger place would probably be beneficial. The restraint, control, contact with the masters, work, and order of things of a great and settled place, would materially help with reference to the nurses.
Limits.
18. Common sense will assuredly make the fixed resolve; both to fulfil one’s duty, and to keep within it. It is as essential to do the latter as the former, and often more difficult, especially for women; most especially for hospital-nurses.
Encumbrance of Public Support or Patronage.
19. It appears to me most important to be free, once and for ever, from the injurious, untrue, and derogatory appendage of public patronage: what is called support in these days always ends in patronage. This work, truly understood, never has been, never will be, never can be, a popular work; for many reasons, one of which is that the public, of all orders, never can know anything of the real nature of hospital-work. With the best intentions, it will therefore make perpetual and impeding mistakes in “supporting” or patronizing it. Its support and patronage are equally injurious in different ways as regards our masters the medical men, ourselves the nurses, and people who are neither medical men nor nurses.
Caution, Non-expectation, and Trust.
20. I end as I began. Let nothing be done rashly. Let us not be fettered with many rules at first. Let us take time to see how things work; what is found to answer best; how the work proceeds; how far it pleases God to accept and bless it. Let us be prepared, as I know well we must be, for disappointments of every sort and kind. What can any of us do in anything, what are any of us meant to do in anything, but our duty, leaving the event to God? His Will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven.