It is, perhaps, advisable first to speak of some of those difficulties met with in the War Hospitals of the East, in order that such may be prevented for others who may in future be Superintendents-General of Nurses in Military Hospitals whether in peace or in war.
I.
No one ought to undertake a matter of duty of this kind without first obtaining the consent of the War Office to five conditions.
1. That every month, each of her sub-Superintendents shall furnish her with an abstract of the requisitions made by her on the Purveyor, whether for Nurses’ consumption, or for that of Patients, and that she furnish the War Office with an abstract of these. It is then the part of the Purveyor to disprove her accounts, instead of its being, as before, her part to disprove his.
2. That it be made a point of honour, not of grace, with the War Department, to submit to her any Report, confidential[2] or otherwise, made concerning the Female Nursing Staff; a condition, without which it would be impossible to have respectable women in the Military Service.
3. That the powers of the Superintendent-General shall be strictly defined, and put in “General Orders” in the first place, and not in the last, in order that there may not be the useless and endless correspondence which there was in the first Superintendent-General’s case (and for what?).
4. That the Superintendent-General have the power of communicating directly with the War Department; and that her Money-Accounts be sent in by her directly to that Department.
5. That it be made a point of honour that the Medical Officers communicate to the Superintendent-General, or Local Superintendent, any complaint they may have against the Nurses for disobedience.
In March 1856 the following appeared in “General Orders.” Had it but been seventeen months earlier how much it might have saved![3] The definition of the Superintendent-General’s powers and duties, therein contained, is all that is wanted to prevent irregularities disastrous to the Service.
General Orders.