Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1901-04-05
NURSDtG IN HOSPITALS.
HARD TO GET 1T DONE CAREFULLY
AND iNTELLlCENTLY.

limited to women, yet it is fact that
all efforts to improve the sick-nurse
and develop thoroughly capable and
well-trained nurses have been for the
benefit of women rather than men.
Many books have been written as text
books for trained nurses, yet scarcely
any of them ever refer to male trained
nurses. The entire system, as it ex-
lists in the different hospitals, is for
the benefit of women rather than men.
Twenty years ago there was little diff
ference between the men and women
who were employed as nurses for the
sick.
The change came some years ago.
explained physician recently when
young women began to take up nurs-
ing in benevolent way as a chance to
exercise charity to the poor Thou
! sands of women have become trained
nurses who would not have taken up
| the work for the money there is in it.
But the market value of a trained
nurse has risen, and nursing the sick
remains business in spite Of ideals of
philanthropy. A probationer or nurse
just starting on her work in hospital
is apt to be tender rhearted, and to go
out of her way to soothe the fevered
brow She pets the children and
makes herself agreeable to the pa
tlents. But sooner or later she comes
| to realize that she is in a profession
quite as technical as any other busi-
ness, and she finds that it is better to
excel in the practical rather than the
sentimental parts OF her duties.
Male nurses are of a different sort
of timber. They have fewer sentiment
tai or philanthropic ideas, but are
doing the same kind of work. Few
hospitals have training school for
their education. yet all hospitals are
obliged to employ them. AS a rule,
the men have drifted into the work
by chance. Certainly no sentimental
considerations have actuated them, as
a rule. A large number have come into
relations with hospitals at some time
by being patients themselves. While
sonvalescing from some sickness, and
/ out of a job they have been employed
IN some capacity around the hospital
and have gradually become nurses.
There are two distinct classes of
male nurses. Some hospitals employ
men exclusively as nurses in the male
wards, ranking their services as highly
as the female trained nurse. But in
| almost every hospital the women have
crowded the men out of these posi-
tions, and men are consequently only
! employed as 'orderlies' or ward SER
wants to assist in subordinate capac-
ity the regular staff Of female nurses.
A woman in training school for nurses
averages two years in the hospital,
and then goes out to private work
Male nurses are apt to stay Indefinite
ly. They like the work and are con-
tent with lower pay than they would
get outside. In some hospitals there
is a constant change in the force of
male nurses, but this is due to the
various methods peculiar to particu-
lar institutions.
Many nurses, especially in Europe,
have received their first training in
military hospitals. A hospital stew
ard in the army ranks as sergeant, and,
together with the entire hospital corps,
occupies position satisfactory to him
self and invaluable in the hospital.
Where well-trained male nurses are
needed, men trained in these military
hospitals are invaluable. Their train
ing places them in the same class with
the best women nurses.
"The most important part of a
nurses work lies in quieting or re-
straining an excited patient A good
nurse can save the doctor the frequent
use Of quieting drugs or even a strait
| jacket by moral control. A rough
nurse can make the most powerful
anodynes useless.
in the operating room there is al
ways occupation for one or more male
nurses. In hospitals the entire care of
i the instruments is under the charge Of
trained male nurse, who sterilizes
everything used in an operation and
prepares all the dressings. In most
hospitals, however, at the present day,
the female nurses have supplanted
| the male nurses in this department.
1T is a great mistake to consider
that there is any radical difference be-
tween nursing insane patients and
nursing the ordinary line of hospital
cases. Nurses always are partial to
case with fever, or some acute surgical
disease. They dislike the class of
cases that are well enough to be out of
bed and around the ward. The worse
the case the more interest it possesses
even If IT wildly delirious. Between a
delirious patient and an insane patient
the only difference may be that the
Corner is sick enough to be in bed.
while the latter is usually up and
about. The less acute the mental dis
order the less interesting the case be-
comes to the nurse. Only a nurse
especially interested in mental
diseases is apt to pay much attention
IN the different mental cOndtiopc IVo,.