The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-09-23
THE NURSING UNION.

" OItClltNI ON1ON.
DR.. Charles H. Mayo, of the famous
Mayo Clinic at Rochester, Minnesota.
says: 1.-The nursing union has come
to be the most autocratic closed shop
in the country"
In an authorized interview in the
Pictorial Review for October, in
which he calls for 100000 sub-nurses
to relieve the acute shortage, Dr..
Mayo charges that the leaders of or
ganized nursing "have carried their
methods too far and with too high u
hand, and in doing this have defeated
their own purpose. for they have lost
sight of the real impulse of their pro-
fession-the alienation of the pain
of the world. Ministration to the sick
and the dying can not be bound by
hard-and-fast laws. They are the
divine right of the poor as we'll as the
rich. A prohibitive price can not be
pus upon them. And that is what the
nurses are doing. Too great COM
liberalization of their services is
making proper care of the sick i'm
possible for those in moderate cir
cumstanees. In addition, their de-
mands as to hours and regulations can
not be met in hospitals if the hos
standards of service. I understand
that in some hospitals the nurses have
even resorted to strikes. This is a
shocking Indictment of the profess
sion. and can not believe that the
nurses involved were heartily in sym
pathy with them. They must have
been misled by the agitation of one
or two malcontents and incompetents.
that doctors should go on
strikel The thought is no less ap-
palling than nurses strike! There
fore with the union becoming men
ace it is time for the public to CO.
operate against it
THE educational standards for
of nurses as set down by
the nursing boards of the various
states have gone beyond all reason.
ANY intelligent girl can acquire in two
years all the knowledge necessary for
the thoroly competent nurse. I kno "
lIdI my WGIh L nGN6I nave to dSh
any nurse to do anything which she
could not have learned how to do in
two years training. But as the laws
of most states demand high school
pre- education and three years train
ing for the registered nurse, the only
way to circumvent them is by train
ing sub-nurses or nursing aids who
will accept smaller pay, whose de-
mands are not so exacting, and who
will be proficient enough to take hold
of almost any case presented to them.
Seven dollars a day for an eight
hour day is more than exorbitant; it
is prohibitive. 1t means that in cases
of dangerous disease where constant
skilfuI care and watching are neces-
sary to save the life of the patients,
three nurses must be employed at a
daily cost of $21 a day. How, I ask.
can the man and woman of average
means afford to pay such charges:
They can not do it. Neither can the
hospitals if they wish to keep open
their doors. f
Good nurses are born. They are
not made, any more than good stenog-
raphers or good writer's or good law
yers are made. Education helps, but
if girl has all the education in the
world and the best of secretarial
training, and yet lacks manual dex-
terity and sound business sense, she
will not make a good stenographer.
All the training in the world will not
make a good nurse of girl who is
thinking about herself and
whose heart does not go out toward
suffering humanity in, a desire to ease
that pain by self-sacrificing service"
------ez--1--