Learning to look closely at the patient’s face, instead of casually glancing at her when you care for her, makes it possible for you to note changes of expression, heightened color, dilated pupils, a trace of strain, etc. Then try to find the exact word that will express what you see. Such experiments in perception and attention, association and memory, repeatedly demanded of yourself—i. e., the being able to recall and describe in detail the room- or ward-arrangements and to place the patients accurately, as we have just described—will prove invaluable practice, helping you to attend to every change in your patient’s demeanor and expression, which may prove significant symptoms. And remember that while the mind can only contain so many isolated facts, yet there is no limit to its possibilities when the power of association of ideas is employed.
Your first step to clear thinking is accuracy of perception, with attention to the thing reason chooses; your second is association of the things perceived, a grouping of them to fit in with each other, and with what is already in the mind. And both imply the third—concentration, aided by emotion and will. For passive attention and haphazard associations assure the opposite of clear thinking.
Concentration
How to Study.—You learn sooner or later from experience that the quickest and best way to learn anything new is to give it your undivided attention at the moment; to perceive one thing at a time and to perceive it as something that is definite, or as some quality that is unblurred. One of you will spend three hours on an anatomy lesson, another two hours, while a third nurse may give it a half-hour of concentrated study and know it better than either of you, if you have been day-dreaming, or talking, or rebelling at the “luck” which keeps you indoors learning about bones, when the tennis-court is so inviting. True, some minds have better natural equipment and some have better previous training than others. But the average mind could learn a lesson well in much less time than is spent upon learning it poorly. Few people hold their attention strictly to the task at hand if something more interesting beckons, or if they feel tired, or “blue.” But you can learn to do it.
Put aside a certain amount of time today for study; hold your undivided attention on your lesson, regardless of how many pleasanter things appeal. When your eyes or your thoughts wander from your note-book, bring them back forcibly, if need be. Your first task is to keep your eyes there, instead of letting them follow your roommate’s movements, or resting them by watching the street below. But it is easier to do this than to make your mind grasp the meaning of the things you see. You may read two or three pages, and not receive one idea, not even be able to recall any words from the context. Your eyes are obeying your will and seeing the words, but your mind is “wool-gathering.” Now take yourself in hand firmly. If you are really a bit fagged, try some deep-breathing exercises before the open window, bathe your face in cold water. Then read a paragraph, close your book, and write, if you are not alone, or repeat to yourself aloud, if your roommate is out, what that paragraph says—its meaning. If you cannot do it, read it again with that end in view. Repeat the process, and hold yourself to it day after day, if necessary, until finally will has won the battle, or, better still, your will to learn has been reinforced by an interest in the very competition with yourself, if not yet in the contest. Then, as you learn some facts from your notes, use your imagination to apply them in real life.
The triceps muscle. What is it for? Your notes inform you, and then it is really interesting to see how it performs its function. What origins and attachments must the triceps have to make it extend the arm? Your notes say that a muscle tends to draw the part to which it is attached toward its origin. This triceps muscle straightens the arm. In that case it must oppose the flexion at the elbow. How is that likely to be done? The triceps must start somewhere above the elbow, and quite far above, too, to be able to make a straight angle of an acute one; it must start toward the back in order to draw back the forearm; and be attached to the back of the bone below. Also it must be quite a long muscle. So much reason tells you. Now let me see how it is done, in fact. And you find that the triceps has three origins high above its one attachment as a tendon, to give it a good strong pull. These are in the outside of the humerus and in the scapula. That is logical, and you will remember it.
Now how does the arm bend? What pulls against the triceps? And you are interested before you know it.
There is nothing, good, bad, or indifferent, but has some points of interest if the mind turns its entire attention to it. But our tendency is to grow tired of calling back our wandering thoughts again and again to the thing that is hard, dry, or stupid. And we need more incentive than just the doing of the duty because it is to be done. We need a compelling interest in the goal to encourage our wills to concentration on the less interesting. Let us first think out the why of knowing anatomy if we are to be nurses. And if the profession of nursing is the goal, let anatomy become just the next stretch of the road that leads to it.
Concentration can be acquired. It may require three hours at first to learn your lesson; but later on you will do it in two, then in one, and perhaps in less. And when you can sit down with your notes and learn them with voices about you—perhaps; with some one else in the room; with a party an hour ahead; when you can disregard all but the work at hand, then you can concentrate, and the big battle of your life as a student is won. Study is no longer drudgery. Lessons occupy much less of your time and leave you more free hours. Because you give them your whole mind you learn them in a fraction of the hours hitherto wasted upon them, when you studied with divided attention. When you are doing clear thinking on the thing at hand, satisfactory results are assured.