It is obvious that the same woman cannot do this for a succession of days and nights.
But the number of severe cases requiring it would unquestionably be much smaller in a single-bed ward hospital, or in a four-bed ward hut hospital, because of its superior immunity from puerperal disease; though, from the single-bed ward condition, every such case will require a nurse all to itself. And the same nurse cannot be always sitting up day and night.
N.B. Repetitions may possibly here be pardoned. The pupil midwife appointed as night watcher for the whole floor cannot be depended upon to attend the bell of any individual watcher. She may be absent at a delivery.
Yet the life of an infant, e.g., in convulsions, depends on minutes—on the watcher being able to summon immediate help, hot water for a bath, and the like.
Those appointed to be called in such emergency should therefore be readily communicated with by bells or otherwise, without disturbing others, either nurses or patients.
As there are no sleeping-rooms for any midwife or pupil in the ward pavilions, it is necessary to insist upon this—that there should be every facility for their being rung up or called up at night.
Every pupil midwife ought to have a little bedroom to herself, or at least a compartment with half a window, or better a whole window, to itself. There should be a bathroom and W.C. on each floor in the pupil nurses’ quarters, and a back staircase.
If a small sickroom could be managed for pupil midwives, it would be advisable. Where there are so many, one may be attacked with bronchitis or with scarlatina. She could not, of course, be ‘warded’ with the lying-in women; and it might be undesirable to leave her in her own little room, though this is quite sufficient for any slight illness. The top floor, as securing greater quiet, and a certain degree of isolation, might be the best for this sickroom.
The whole of the pupil midwives’ quarters should have direct and ready means of communication with the hospital proper. Each relief should be independent of the other two, and under the immediate supervision of the official woman, whose quarters are attached to its own.
It need scarcely be stated that an essential part of a Pupil Midwife’s training is to attend lying-in women at their own homes, with the conveniences or rather the inconveniences of those homes. Otherwise the Pupil will be the less fit for her after-work. The last two months of every six might well be given to this. But, as above said, these ‘Notes’ about management, for they are nothing more, simply treat of it as regards construction, and do not refer to the necessary training, either in-door or outdoor, at all.[[23]]