Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1921-11-24
MISS S. LILLIAN CLAYTON
On the Need for Nurses

NEVER have there been so many trained
~ nurses in the country. and yet never
has there been such Il need for more nurses.
There is hardly hospital whose nursing
staff IS not depleted. This situation, brought
about largely because of the many avenues
to specialization that have been opened
since the war to the nursing profession, Is
explained today by Miss S. Lillian Clayton,
superintendent of nurses at the Philade4-
phia General Hospital.
1T is misleading" says Miss Clayton,
''to speak of shortage of nurses, for there
Is no shortage in the sense that there are
not no many as before. There are more
than ever. In 1916 there were 9531 trained
nurses graduated from hospitals and In
stitutions throughout this country, in 1913
there were 1886, in 1910 there we're 10,
S36 and last year there were llo'2 so
that it cannot be that nursing is not getting
as large a share of the educated young
women who are choosing careers.
1T is rather that the tremendous
spread Of public health movements, IN
dustrial health movements, child hygiene
movements and the new operations, many
of which require. great numbers of techni-
clans, has made a demand for nurses that
our training schools are not yet able to
meet.
Profession Still Appeals
II have no fear that nursing rs a profess
sion will ever lose It's appeal to young
women. The average girl of sober instincts
usually fixes her desires III one OF two direc-
tous: she wants her own house or she wants
a life of general service The profession
of nursing offers to the normal woman tn
answer to her every emotional problem 1t
satisfies in a practical way the desire to
give affection and ministration; 1t develops
the problems Of child culture and OF house
keeping, the solution OF when Is the
peculiarly creative side OF womans lie.
THE difficulty, then, is not to get young
women or even the right young women 10
become nurses, but to get schools that are
equipped to supply the world with graduate
nurses who can meet the requirements that
are now made of the profession. Nursing
is no longer an apprenticeship in the art
of making beds, recording temperatures,
administering medicines and keeping charts
and the modern nurse must be more than
merely competent, somewhat colorless
person who can remember and carry out
a doctors orders. The modern nurse should
know not only how and when to do things,
but why there IS need to do them
There Is coming a thorough rcorganiza..
tion and Standardization OF our system OF
educating nurses. The degree Of a nurse
IS to be made q less ambiguous thing than
ut present, for it now means only that she
had undergone Il course of training at some
accredited hospital and has satisfied the
minimum requirements OF an examining
board.
"These boards exist in most States and
represent the only successful attempts at
legalized Standardization. The time is
coming, I hope, where there will be uniform
requirements for the nursing profession
throughout the Country-whcu TO be q regis
tered nurse will mean that one has had the
benefit of training equal to that which Is
now given in hospital school that has the
most advanced systems of training and the
broadest curricula
"This means that the average modern
hospital can no longer deem itself sufficient
to the training of its undergraduate nurses.
The hospital must send its nurses to another
hospital for whatever training 1t cannot
| called 'afiiation,' is now being to some ex-
tent adopted.
Given General Training
Here at the Philadelphia General Hos
pital, for example, we take nurses from the
| Children's Hospital and from other of the
| smaller special hospitals for the training
| in general hospital work. Few hospitals
| have the funds to support an adequate StAf
| of lecturers and instructors for their train
| ing schools, and this is one of the reasons
| why the profession so strongly urges per-
| manently endowed hospitals or else larger
| State appropriations to hospitals.
"The lack of training in the care OF
psychopathc patients Is an example iof
| what I mean. Only few of the larger
| general hospitals in the country have
psychopathic clinics, and most of the hos
|, pitfalls for the insane are not prepared to
| take and train nurses outside OF their own
| point out why n nurse should need an un-
| derstanding of the problems OF treating the
| mentally i'll; but unless che has been lucky