If we would really acquire emotional poise, there are a few practical, proved methods we might adopt for ourselves.
When we can hold back the expression of the almost overpowering impulse or passion of anger and resentment and hurt; absolutely shut tight our lips until we can think; then wait until we can think without the strain of intense feeling, we will not only keep ourselves out of trouble, but will be able to calmly state our position, right the wrong done us if wrong there was, or recognize that we ourselves were wrong. For we seldom analyze the situation properly under the influence of strong feeling. If we want to accomplish anything with our words, let us wait until we can speak them without having to choke down our sobs or cram back our hot anger, or forcibly restrain ourselves from tearing things or slamming doors. After all that “wild fire” of emotion is gone, judgment will lead us to wisely reasoned action.
Self-correction
Accuracy in work, a primary essential to the nurse, can become automatic if she will demand of herself accuracy of perception, and concentrate on learning and doing until details almost take care of themselves; if she will correct her own work by the standards taught her, and recognize just why and wherein she falls short. Not that she can always do things with the nicety in which they were taught. She cannot give eighteen ward patients in eight hours the same detailed care her private patients would receive if she had only two of them for the same length of time. In such a case she must often sacrifice refinements of detail in service; but there is no excuse for sacrificing accuracy in the necessary treatments of her charges. The nurse merely chooses between the multitude of things which can be done for her ward, the important ones which must be done. Because she is rushed is no excuse for giving a poor hypodermic injection or a careless bed-bath. Accuracy in doing the essential things should be so automatic that it takes not a whit more time than inaccurate doing; and such accuracy is chiefly dependent on constant self-correction when the task is still new, and on never letting up in practice until the details of the doing become practically automatic.
Training the Will
There is no better opportunity for will-training than the hospital affords the nurse. The constant necessity of acting against desire, of doing tasks which in themselves cannot be agreeable, calls for a developed will, while it gives it constant exercise. Moods of discouragement and depression cannot be indulged. The nurse must do her work no matter how tired or blue or “frazzled” she feels, if she is not too sick to be on duty; for all time lost, she knows, is to be made up to the hospital before training is completed.
Can this will to do, despite strong desire to the contrary, this mood control and the ability to disregard physical discomfort, be acquired; and if so, how?
It is a law of the mind and of the body that any task becomes easier by repetition. We found that automatic habit eases much of the strain of action. What seemed repulsive service to the probationer on her first day in the hospital, she forced herself to do because she wanted to be a nurse. She may go on through her three years unreconciled to these particular duties, yet holding herself to them because she likes other features of her work, or because she must earn her living and this seems the best avenue open to her, or because her will to become a nurse is strong enough to make her act continually against desire. And finally, for almost every nurse, the interest in the end to be attained overshadows the unpleasant incidents in its way. The tasks are actually easier by their constant repetition, and her feeling of repugnance becomes only a mild dislike. She has strengthened her will by continuing to act against desire. But there is a better way to the same goal.
The woman who has thought out the reasons for and against taking training; who has considered it carefully as a profession, and has chosen to put up with any obstacles in the way of becoming a graduate nurse, can find a happy adjustment to the disagreeable incidents it involves. Realizing that the paths of learning are seldom thoroughly smooth, she can resolve to use their very roughness for firmer footholds, as a means to self-control, as a fitting for the sterner hardships of self-support, of nursing the dangerously ill, alone, of meeting suffering and death in her patients with quiet courage and faith. In other words, she can meet the thousand and one personal services which in themselves might be disagreeable and prove pure drudgery, not merely with the stern will to do them because they are a necessary part of obtaining a desired end, but also for the sake of adding to the comfort and well-being of each patient in her care. The emotion of interest and kindly desire will ease the strain which will undergoes in demanding that she not shirk the disagreeable. For there is little stress in doing what we wish to do.
It is psychologically possible to find genuine pleasure in the meanest tasks if the doing is backed up by a strong desire to make life count as much for others as possible. The nurse who comes to realize the waste involved in carrying out against desire what reason proposes and volition dictates, will try to secure the co-operation of desire, and save will-force for more worthy accomplishment.