Hospital housekeeping

by Charlotte A. Aikens

Charlotte A. Aikens.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Preface		7-8
Chapter I—	The Hospital Housekeeper; The Housekeeper’s
	Province; Bookkeeping; Hospital Inventory	13-19
Chapter II—	The Main Entrance; The Porter; The Private
	Rooms; Hospital Couches; Fumigation;
	The Daily Cleaning; Dusting; Bath Rooms	20-29
Chapter III—	The Hospital Ward; Soiled Clothing;
	Buying Beds; Bed Making; Ward Lockers; Care
	of Patients’ Clothing; Ward Medicines and Records;
	Adjuncts to the Hospital Ward; Quiet Room;
	Matters Miscellaneous; Destruction of Appliances;
	Screens; A Twenty-Bed Ward Equipment	30-42
Chapter IV—	The Linen Room; Bed Linen; The Room; Linen
	Accounting; Discarded Linen; Emergency
	Supply; Removing Stains; New Linen;
	Shelf Management; Laundry Bags	43-50
Chapter V—	The Hospital Laundry; Manager’s Duties;
	Laundry Workers; Starching; Blueing; Drying;
	Ironing; Routine of Work; The Laundry Plant	51-59
Chapter VI—	The Hospital Kitchen; General Construction;
	Kitchen Cabinet; Plan of a Model Kitchen;
	Cold Storage; The Storeroom; Dishwashing;
	Dishcloths and Towels; The Chief Kitchen
	Employees; Training Needed; The Diet Kitchen	60-70
Chapter VII—	The Purchase and Care of Food Supplies; Judging
	Food Values; Bread; Milk; Care of Milk; Cheese;
	Eggs; Economy and Care; Meat; Beef; Veal and
	Mutton; Chickens; Fish; Pork; Butter; Fresh
	Vegetables; Approximate Estimate of Quantities
	of Food for a Twenty-five Bed, a Fifty-Bed and
	a One Hundred-Bed Hospital	71-87
Chapter VIII—	Preparation of Food; Object of Cooking;
	Classes of Diets; Broths; Soups; Cooking
	Meats; Cooking Vegetables; Time of Meals	88-97
Chapter IX—	Diet Lists and Blanks; Serving of Food;
	Tray Setting; Bills of Fare; Dishes;
	Hints on Serving	98-110
Chapter X—	Hospital Dietaries; Supplies for One Hundred
	Persons for Thirty Days; Menus for
	Nitrogenous Diet	110-119
Chapter XI—	Hospital Hygiene; Prevention of Disease;
	Sanitary Kitchens; Pure Food; Filters and
	Water; Air; Cleanliness; Flies; Garbage;
	Garbage Crematories	120-131
Chapter XII—	The Help Question; Number of Servants;
	Contracts; Merit System; Schedule of
	Work; Rules; Servants’ Dining Rooms;
	Sleeping Rooms; Attire; Housekeeper’s
	Relation to Servants	132-143
Chapter XIII—	The Problem of Waste; Main Causes; First Steps;
	Surgical Department; Utilizing Hospital Waste;
	Soap making; Drugs; Wasteful Physicians; Teach
	Economy; Abuse of Appliances; Careful Accounting;
	Watching the Expenditures; Dietetic Department;
	System	144-158
Appendix—	Disinfection; Fumigation Can;
	Exterminationof Vermin; Care of Floors	159-162

Hospital Housekeeping

CHAPTER I.

The Hospital Housekeeper

Hospital housekeeping is intensely practical business. If it is to be successfully and satisfactorily conducted, it demands that the housekeeper be a woman of no inferior or uncertain attainments. All the elements that make for success in home housekeeping, and many more, are needed in a hospital. There must be breadth of vision, the qualities of an organizer, the ability to deal with large problems, a keen sense of justice, and the executive force needed to manage, without fear, fuss or favor, the various classes of people that touch the housekeeper’s realm. Many a man who is a success in managing a village store would utterly fail when placed in charge of even one section of a great department store. And the same may be said of the average woman in hospital housekeeping. Apart from the special knowledge of the business, that comes only by diligent study, accurate observation and experience—never by accident—the housekeeper needs special qualities of mind and heart. Indeed, special qualifications are needed by every one whose life work is to be wrought out in an institution. A hospital or any institution that has to deal with infirm, aged or unfortunate members of society, is no place for a person of strong racial antipathies. It is no place for the tale-bearer or the gossip, nor for the person who has a grudge against fate and feels she has never received justice. It is no place for the person who is discouraged, or who assumes the air of a martyr, and leads a crushed life, bemoaning the fact that her highest motives and best efforts are never appreciated. Those who would live happily in an institution must be prepared to be misunderstood, and fortified against discouragement from that source. Sympathy with the aims of the institution is a primary qualification. No one should enter an institution as a worker, and especially as head of a department, who is not prepared to have her interests centered in the people for whose benefit the institution was brought into existence. Ability to see things from more than one standpoint, to work comfortably with different classes of people, an infinite capacity for detail, and systematic business habits—these are a few of the qualities that should characterize the woman who undertakes to manage the domestic affairs of a hospital. It need hardly be mentioned that she needs a healthy body and a strong constitution.