In building a new Hospital, some covered arcade or some place where the patients might take exercise in wet weather, and where inspection could be exercised over them, without fuss, is worth contriving. In St. Thomas’s, the patients walk under the covered arcades of the court.
Reserve Wards.
Both in Bethanien and in the Charité Hospitals at Berlin there are reserve wards,—or rather in the Charité there is a reserve Hospital, into which most of the sick are moved for six months in the year, to change the air alternately of all the wards, which during the time receive a thorough cleaning. Great stress is laid at Berlin on thus providing, when building a new Hospital, a certain reserve space, which obviates the necessity of less efficient and far more costly steps afterwards.
V. Nurses’ Meals.
V. Let us, by all means, consider as settled, that the Nurses’ food is sent them cooked. Possibly, in the long run, the undoubted advantages of this plan will be found to be over-balanced by its disadvantages; but let us begin by trying it. I submit that their dinners, and possibly suppers, should alone be sent them cooked, and that each Nurse should receive a fixed weekly quantity of groceries, and a daily or two days’ allowance of bread.
For packing up the Nurse’s meals sent her from the kitchen, a Vienna custom might be useful. Each Nurse to have a long, strong, straw basket, properly named or numbered. Some contain five dishes and covers, but two or three would here be sufficient for every purpose, including an occasional slice of pudding. The dishes strong tin, with a tin cover, and if the Nurse prefers eating her dinner out of it rather than the dignity of plates, and the trouble of washing them up, the Matron should let her take hers her own way. If taken by hand, two baskets of this sort can be carried with ease. But if the Matron, as a general procedure, sends each Nurse a hot little dinner, of a good well-cooked portion of meat and vegetables, one such dish and cover will do for one Nurse, and three, five, or six can be accommodated out of the same basket, or one large basket, carried by two men, would serve all the Nurses round. The dishes should, in either case, be numbered or named, not the Nurse’s name, but the ward.
A dish and cover of strong, coarse earthenware is used in the Vienna Hospital, as a grander edition of dinner, &c. The tin ones keep warm without fire for a long time. If the meal arrives when the Nurse cannot eat it, put by on the hob, or some provision for warming in the scullery, it will keep warm and good till she can eat it.
VI. Arrangements for a Pavilion served by one Nurse.
VI. Supposing that we serve each Pavilion by one Nurse, I submit that—
1. Nurse’s Day-room.