Chautauqua School of Nursing - Yearbook (Jamestown, NY)

Page 25 text:

is ,. a s A - C: p scHooL OE NURSING for' such cases. All this applies to the student-nurse before graduation. Such experiences as this under the supervision of a practicing physician is superior to any other training the nurse can receive for private nursing. . Furthermore, there are opportunities for the- ministrations of the student-nurse in her home and among her friends in nursing the simpler ailments in which the services of the experienced nurse are not generally sought. Every one of our students can get this preliminary practice in the various aspects of nursing described and illustrated in-our courses, so that by the time she receives our certificate of gradua- tion, she may have acquired confidence in her ability,' based upon actual experience, and in a great many ,cases have established friendly relations in many homes and with their various physicians. After that, as our graduates have testified, success is merely a question of faithfulness in the performance of her duty as expert assistant in the sick-room. W To assist the graduate in, gaining practice we take up the matter by correspondence with the physician she recommends, advising him fully of the ground she has covered in her studies and her Htness to undertake the care of patients. This plan in conjunction with the plan previously described, soon places the nurse in a fair way to gain a lucrative practice. As Arthur W. Yale, M. D., said in a recent article, Every physician is only too thankful to Write in his address book the name of a nurse upon Whom he can thoroughly rely. f f-AX .L mm unsg . f c -'iw up--' it 1 t.t 1 if .H A -ca isj if' iill 5 ',. '! ,Q X y ,. .muu nip ,ii ,ap 'MUN , 1 . .lil t ' .Y - g . Wg 19

Page 24 text:

Practice at Home THE GHAUTAUQUA It K . The first practical experience of the student is gained in her own' home or among her own friends. Here she can practice virtually all the procedures used in nursing. For instance, expert- ness in bed-making for the sick can be gained with a voluntary patient in health, ability to 'take temperature, to read the pulse, to measure and administer medicines, to change the cloth- ing of a helpless patient, to prepare food for the invalid- ability in these and a very large number of other duties of the nurse is acquired at the student's leisure and convenience and under such conditions that she can go over the various procedures again and again until she has absolutely mastered them. Then, when a student trainedlunder our method goes into the sick-room she finds there is nothing with which she is not as a rule thor- oughly familiar. If the case is unfamiliar or if it demands knowledge out of the ordinary, there is the physician to advise her, and with her preparation she is in a position to carry out her instructions. ' i I This is the way one student became prohcient by practice at home: T ' ' 'My mother was my patient sometimes and I used to put her in bed and pretend she was sick, taking her temperature and pulse, and making out the report just as 'if the ph sician were to call and see it. In this way I also learned how to make tlie bed with a patient in it. - At times m mother would be a helpless patient and I would move her just as thougfi she were really sick. Then again both my mother and my son became my patients in an accident and I would bandage them from head to feet. ' ' Again, in this connection the family-physician or some other physician interested in her welfare is usually ready to offer advice to the young student, and as she progresses in her studies will gladly avail himself of her services and guide her practice in occa- sional charity cases which physicians are sometimes called upon to look after. If she proves herself prohcient it will not be long before he will recommend her on suitable cases with remunera- tion. Simple cases of convalescence, old age, the milder fevers, and the like, can almost always be secured at modest fees, and the physician gladly recommends women of some training to care ' 18' '

Page 26 text:

The Hospital Training School Graduate ,THE GHAUTAUQUA ,-Z THE EXPERIENCED NURSE THE United States census reports show that there are over a hundred thousand professional nurses who have received no institutional training. For most of these hospital training is out of the question because of the age limit, and yet the need of a knowledge of the best methods in modern nursing, dietetics, asepsis, etc., is coming to be more and more recognized. Our course has constantly kept in mind this great body of practical nurses. From the beginning nearly one-half the enroll- ments have come from these nurses of experience, who found in this plan of correspondence study the opportunity to acquire greater efficiency and knowledge without interrupting their work. They recognized the value of this training in giving them a more dignified standing with the doctor. They found that their pre- vious experience in the sick-room was the best preparation for the course, and the course in turn corrected, amended, and improved whatever was short of the best in theirpast procedures and gave them the method of the trained nurse. No small advantage derived by these nurses from this course is the increased remuneration they are able to command, both through increaseof their weekly salary and the larger call for their services. The graduate nurse who had to work too hard in the hospital to study adequately and who feels herself not fully prepared to meet the exigencies and special requirements of nursing under the conditions she will encounter in private homes, finds in this course the thorough training in the theory of nursing that she failed to receive in the hospital. The large number of expedients required by the varied conditions of private nursing Qthe need for which is not encountered in the hospital but which are taught by this schoolj, of themselves well repay her for taking the course. In addition, the survey of new and improved methods which are constantly added to the course as they are perfected by medi- cal research, places her decidedly in advance of the non-studious and non-progressive nurse. These are the reasons which lead hospital graduates to pursue this course as post-graduate study. 20