They are talking of having two night sisters soon—one medical and one surgical—and there would be plenty of work for two, as we have a good deal of theatre work in the night, and sometimes I cannot help being worried when I am kept long in the theatre with urgent cases, and I know there are bad cases over in the medical buildings (sometimes with only rather junior nurses in charge of them), and I can't get round to visit them.
I have charge of about six hundred beds, and they are divided into twenty-one wards (of course nurses in each ward and two nurses in the large wards); I have to go all round three times every night, and run in much oftener to see any bad cases, and the nurses send for me in any difficulty; there is a slate in my office for messages, and when I return after my rounds I often find two or three messages, "Please come at once to P."; "Please come to N.—urgent," and so on, and I have to fly to whichever I think is likely to be the most urgent.
The morning round always takes the longest, as all the patients are then awake, and I have to say good morning to them all, and remember to ask after their particular aches and pains, and it is not very easy to remember what is the matter with them all, though I know very well all the details about those who are very ill and have much done for them in the night.
There is one place I don't enjoy visiting, and that is the strong room at the top of the surgical buildings. Lately we seem to have had so many men who go off their heads (generally from drink), and if they are left in the wards they disturb the other patients so much that it is better for them to be moved, and then they have male attendants up there; but these male attendants are not members of our regular staff (I wish they were), and I never feel that I quite know their capabilities, or how much I can trust them, and more than once I have found them asleep; so I have to go up very often when any patient is bad there.
I remember one night we had a very lively time of rushing about. We began with a man who had cut his throat—not very bad, but he had to go up to the theatre; then a lady who had taken three ounces of laudanum, and the doctors had to keep her walking up and down the corridor, with a weary porter on each side of her, for six hours before they thought it safe to let her turn into a bed; then I was called to a poor man in Ward P., who got worse, and died rather suddenly—a phthisis case; next a tracheotomy came in, and had to be done at once, and while we were all busy with it a baby was born in Ward D.; but the day sister had to be called to attend to that, as I was mixed up with the diphtheria case, and could not go near a confinement; then a fractured femur came in, and next an acute pneumonia—rather delirious. In the intervals of receiving these new cases and sorting them to the different wards we had to brew strong coffee and administer it to the lady who had taken poison, and provide refreshments for the porters who were minding her. In the early morning she was allowed to go to bed and to sleep; she recovered very soon, and I don't think she will do it again!
I joined the Royal National Pension Fund for Nurses a few months ago; it seems to be a good thing, and if I can only keep up the premiums I shall have the noble pension of about £20 or so when I am fifty; it will keep me in extras when I retire to the workhouse, as I am certain no one can go on nursing for a great many years at the pace we have to go in hospital.
Just now I am having a rest (and another sister is rushing about on night duty), as I have been warded for the past fortnight, and in a few days I hope to go home for a change.
I had a cold for many weeks, and did not pay much attention to it, as I thought it was only because I was about all night and did not get enough sunshine to help me to throw it off; but then I got very bad headaches, so I had to see a doctor, and he passed me on to our nose specialist, who has been most awfully kind, coming down every day, and sometimes twice a day, to see me. It was not really a cold, but some disease in the antrum, and he has done two small operations for me, and it has been horridly painful, but now it is getting well rapidly, and every one has been most awfully good to me, and I am beginning to feel less of a limp rag than I have done for some time past.
It was funny spending Christmas as a patient instead of running about looking after the patients; but it was nearly my first day up, so I was glad enough to be lazy, and I have had many visitors, so it has not been dull at all.