Every hospital experience ought to be a practical lesson to the patient in how to serve food. A taste for the dainty and beautiful, for wholesome and simple things, may be created there that will permanently influence the sick one to higher ideals of living. And certainly the manner of serving food is a pretty fair indication of the tone of the institution. Refinement or absence of refinement will be detected at a glance by one who has a keen appreciation of the aesthetic.
The best results in food service will never be secured in any hospital until some one person is appointed whose chief business is the preparation of special diets and the oversight of serving. In many large or well-regulated hospitals this matter is in the hands of women specially trained in dietetics, and there one has a right to expect better service than in institutions where one overworked woman must attend to that and a dozen other things, or where the responsibility of serving food is divided among many. If the person in charge has had in addition to the training in dietetics practical experience as a hospital nurse, still better service may be expected. A genuine sympathetic interest, or as some one else has termed it, “an affectionate interest,” in the people for whom the food is prepared, a keeping in mind the Golden Rule in serving and preparing food, as in other departments of the hospital, is fully as important as a knowledge of the science of nutrition. The soul life of the individual can find abundant opportunities for its expression in the diet kitchen as in the ward. There is a field here for specializing which is fully as worthy of a nurse’s attention as some of the other lines of nursing.
CHAPTER X.
Hospital Dietaries
The following dietary regulations have been adopted in the New York Hospital:
“All patients shall be furnished the regular house diet, unless otherwise specially directed by the attending physician or surgeon. As a substitute for the house diet there may be furnished, on the order of the attending physician or surgeon only, either of the following:
“1. Restricted diet.
“2. Milk diet.
“The attending physician or surgeon shall specify on the occasion of his first visit to a patient which diet shall be furnished. This duty may not be delegated to the house physician, except that on the admission of a patient to a ward it shall be his duty to give instruction on the subject to the nurse in charge, and such instruction shall be followed until the first visit of the attending physician or surgeon.