Of constantly sick mean proportion per cent. requiring night nursing:
| General Hospital, Fort Pitt Medical Division | 5 |
| General Hospital, Fort Pitt Surgical Division | 1 |
| Garrison Hospital | 2 |
These cases are usually scattered through the wards.
It is but fair to add that the best Medical Officers themselves desire another system, or rather are aware that there is at present no system at all, and would gladly accept one. “With means for good night-nursing,” they say, “arrangements in accordance might be introduced. At present we like to have a case requiring much attendance amongst cases that require little, in order that the patients or comrades may assist.”
What are the consequences of such “assistance” to the cases in question has already been fully stated throughout these notes.
Poor-Law Regulation for Nursing in Union Workhouses.
“With respect to the use of [the inmates as] servants, they require the strictest superintendence on the part of the * * officers. The employment of [the inmates] in offices of trust is inexpedient, inasmuch as it tends to impair the discipline of the house. In offices of mere labour, which can be performed under trustworthy superintendence, [the inmates] may be useful. Where responsibility is involved, paid servants should be engaged.”
The above is one of the regulations of what?—not of a Charitable Institution but of the Poor Law; and the house of which it treats so tenderly and wisely is—a Workhouse![19] If paupers are to be thus cared for, how should it be with our soldiers? If any “office” can be called one “of trust,” surely it is that of carrying out the orders of the Medical man in a critical case, a case of life or death! Can any “responsibility” be “involved,” greater than this? Yet these are just the cases left to the “Comrade Patients.” For ordinary cases the ordinary attendance is given; for serious cases, the untrained and unskilled attendance. Yet, if the Hospitals are not for these serious cases, what are they for? For these alone, however, is no systematic provision made. One would think that every bad case took the Hospital by surprise. Imagine the orders of the Medical Officers carried out by nurses (?) changed “every two hours,” and who are, in fact, sleepy patients!
The system of Military nursing and management, as described by Army Medical Officers themselves in the above quotations, and which is, we are expressly told, to be re-enacted at the Royal Victoria Netley Hospital, is precisely the one which led, as a matter of course, to the calamities, as far as nursing was concerned, in the Hospitals in the East, and which will lead to them again so long as it is continued. Even in the case of invalids, who may not require such careful attendance as sick, the system of nursing by comrades is most objectionable; and if the attendance at Netley can only be carried out on such a plan, it is doubtful whether Netley should be used even for an Invalid Hospital.
The question has been asked the Netley Committee, By whom are your Invalids to be nursed, when sick? And it has been answered, that they are to nurse each other!