Prenatal care, clean deliveries, and intelligent motherhood will go far toward solving the problem of a high maternal and infant death rate, and these require not widespread care, alone, but widespread teaching as well—impressing upon women and their families the importance of care and precautions in connection with childbirth. Important as it is for men to study and inform themselves in regard to the problems of finance and cattle raising, for example, it is still more important for both men and women to study and appreciate the problems of expectant and actual motherhood.
It is in this teaching that the nurse may be immeasurably helpful, in fact is indispensable, for the carrying of approved care into the home and the general teaching of personal hygiene are inextricably bound up with nursing.
The details of the care and teaching of patients are, of course, specified by a doctor or a medical board, but the effectiveness of the planning, whether for one or several patients, is very largely dependent upon the nurse’s intelligence, interest and conscientiousness, and her ability to teach.
This is borne out by the almost uniform recommendations, made by official bodies, for provisions looking toward the reduction of maternal and infant deaths including as they do the following:
1. The employment of public health nurses. (To give home care or instruction or both.)
2. The establishment of prenatal clinics and baby health centers. (In both of these the nurse aids in supervising and teaching the mother how to take care of herself and her baby.)
3. Trained attendance during labor. (The nurse aids greatly in preparing for and assisting with clean deliveries.)
4. Improved and increased hospital facilities. (There cannot be good hospital work without good nursing.)
5. Prompt and accurate registration of births. (Here, too, the nurse may be helpful by always making sure that the birth has been reported.)
Here is no light task nor mean privilege which is set before the nurse and in order to meet them fitly she must be prepared. The indispensable requisites for nursing and teaching the maternity patient, whether at home or in a hospital, are training, an exacting conscience, and genuine concern for her patient as an individual.