Limits.
18. Common sense will assuredly make the fixed resolve; both to fulfil one’s duty, and to keep within it. It is as essential to do the latter as the former, and often more difficult, especially for women; most especially for hospital-nurses.
Encumbrance of Public Support or Patronage.
19. It appears to me most important to be free, once and for ever, from the injurious, untrue, and derogatory appendage of public patronage: what is called support in these days always ends in patronage. This work, truly understood, never has been, never will be, never can be, a popular work; for many reasons, one of which is that the public, of all orders, never can know anything of the real nature of hospital-work. With the best intentions, it will therefore make perpetual and impeding mistakes in “supporting” or patronizing it. Its support and patronage are equally injurious in different ways as regards our masters the medical men, ourselves the nurses, and people who are neither medical men nor nurses.
Caution, Non-expectation, and Trust.
20. I end as I began. Let nothing be done rashly. Let us not be fettered with many rules at first. Let us take time to see how things work; what is found to answer best; how the work proceeds; how far it pleases God to accept and bless it. Let us be prepared, as I know well we must be, for disappointments of every sort and kind. What can any of us do in anything, what are any of us meant to do in anything, but our duty, leaving the event to God? His Will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven.
II. Nurses in Civil Hospitals.
Isolation of each Head Nurse and her Nurses.
1. The isolation of each head-nurse and her nurses appears to me very important. The head-nurse should be within reach and view of her ward both day and night. Associating the nurses in large dormitories tends to corrupt the good, and make the bad worse. Small airy rooms contiguous to the ward are best. The ward should have but one entrance, and the head-nurse’s room should be close to it, so that neither nurse nor patient can leave, nor any one enter the ward, without her knowledge.
All to Rank and be Paid alike, with Progressive Increase of Wages.