The San Saba news. [volume] (San Saba, Tex.) 1873-1966, 1889-02-08
Paw of Professional Nurses.

The business of the trained nurse is
not yet overdone, though the chances
are that inside OF four or five years its
palmy days may be past. Some Of the
pretty, white capped creatures who
| graduated in the earliest classes from the
training schools and hospitals are CAPT
talists in a modest feminine way now
A tall brunette, who mas been at work
seven or eight years, and whose eyes are
quick and touch soothing and deft be-
You'd description, owns three or four de-
slrable corner lots, which were bought
with a shrewd insight into the directions
of the city's growth, and are worth
pretty penny more than she paid for
them to-day. A second nurse, who has
distinguished herself beyond the aver
age, bought out restaurant which does
thriving trade, the profits of which
would keep her if she did not prefer to
retain the old manager, dapper little
Frenchman, in charge, and pursue the
calling in which she has succeeded. The
regular rate for the services of trained
nurse is $50 To S24 and board per week,
and the demand is brisk enough to en-
ploy them on an average forty-tive weeks
out Of the year. Unusually skilled nurses
sometimes get $50 or $35 per week, while
under graduates in their second years.
training are permitted TO go out at the
rate of SIG week. What attracts many
women to the work is the fact that in
most of the hospitals they are paid liber-
ally while learning This practice is
likely to be abolished before long, how
ever, rs the managers regard the train
ing sufficient recompense for services
rendered. The course varies from two
years in Bellevue and in the Brooklyn
Training School to eighteen months in
other Institutions.
The nurses are recruited Largely from
the ranks Of those who would otherwise
be milliners or dressmakers, though
many highly educated ladies are found
among them, attracted by the work,
which seems to them especially feminine.
Some of the younger nurses become so
much interested !. the medical cad q.
their duties that, after graduating. theya
study medicine and become practition-
eTs- There is one young girl in Bellevue
now who graduated from a country col
lege and came 10 New York to teach
and earn money to pay her way through
medical college. She found that teach
ers' wages made her task an impossible
one, and went to the hospital 10 learn a
business that would pay better and help
her at the same time certain distance
on her road Her course is likely to
be followed by other poor but ambitious
girls. The best paying field which has
opened before intelligent nurses with
organizing and executive ability, how
ever, has been, after perfecting them
selves, to open framing schools on their
own account in localities not supplied.
with such schools. There are women
who have gone all over New York State
and good distances West establishing
centres from which go out developed
This was the plan, though not
conceived with a view to the financial
return, which brought General Wade
daughter to New York to
obtain the knowledge that would fit her
to start training schools in the South.
She has made one of the best head nurses
ever seen in q hospital ward. The num-
Der of nurses is not equal to the demand I
yet. but it is increasing so fast that the 4
profession may be ove1crowded, like |
most departments Of woman's work.
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