Chautauqua School of Nursing - Yearbook (Jamestown, NY)

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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

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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

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rs.-iii - ' f e .., I. I + , T A ,xy SCHOCL OFNURSINC5 T yi, PREPARATION FOR HOSPITAL TRAINING 0NE of the most valuable applications 'of this course' is as special preparation for hospital training. The number of young women who have thus prepared themselves before enter- ing hospitals has been so large that this may be considered a most important phase of our work. One great hardship in hospital training is the necessity for the student to receive instruction after the hard work of the day. A writer in The Trained Nurse and Hospital Review recently stated that the custom of holding classes and lectures at night defeats its own ends. The pupils are tired and often sleepy and are not in proper condition, either mentally or physically, to receive and retain impressions. Long hours and hard work are not conducive to receptiveness, and every effort should be made to remedy this practice. ' ' An editorial in The American Journal of Nursing states that ,Uwe have never known ag hospital that had nurses enough to properly care for the patients and still have time and strength and enthusiasm left for the strictly theoretical side of the training. I A student recently wrote: ' 'The Chautauqua lectures have proved of more benefit to me than the lectures I received in con- nection with the training school. y I A hospital graduate nurse of seven years' experience, who completed the Chautauqua course, wrote: I soon realized I was learning more theoretically than I had previously learned in my two years' study at the hospital. I Another hospital graduate wrote: I learned and remem- bered much more of what I learned from the Chautauqua course than I did from my whole two years ' study in the training school. A graduate of the Chautauqua school, who entered a large hos- pital 'in' New York City, wrote that after she had been there three days' she was placed in charge of a ward, She stated: They said I was able to do it, if you know anything of what a proba- tioner's life usually is, you will see what the course did for me. ' ' m 21