1. It severs certain persons for night-duty, who have full time for sleep and refreshment in the air during day, and who are allowed to do no other work.
2. It secures these persons good food and refreshment at night.
3. These persons know their sick, and, being told on coming on duty, of any change, &c., are as much at home in their posts by night as others are by day.
4. When it is found that a Sister cannot sleep by day, and, therefore, that her health breaks, she is not allowed to finish the four weeks and become ill, but is put to another duty and another Sister appointed to the watch.
(Many a strong Nurse cannot sleep at day.)
5. The persons so appointed get into the way of it, if they stand it at all, and the system is found a great relief to the whole house and a great gain to the sick, in the place of another system of dividing the night between two Sisters and two Men-Nurses, who each watch half of the watch.
Per contrà.
I. The great London hospitals are places very far from perfect: some things may, please God, be, with time, patience, and extreme quietness, very much improved; but some things will never be perfect and never can be. But they are places where I do believe, and so far as I know, the sick are cared for in a way that is done nowhere else. The proportion of heavy cases in every London ward, cannot, I think, be met except by having a watcher in each. An English physician or surgeon would not consider that his cases could otherwise receive the attendance and the watching, the observation of possible change and prevention of possible mischief, which they ought to receive.
It is right to bear in mind,—
1. That small wards multiply exceedingly the demand for Watchers: four wards, of 10 patients each, taking the average of patients as in London, would not be attended, according to the English notion, by one Watcher; 40 patients in one ward would be fully attended by one Watcher. The London Hospital has two Night-Nurses for its quadruple wards. An extra Night-Nurse has frequently to be put on, on account of the difficulty the subdivision of the ward gives to the watching.