Holy Cross School of Nursing - Lamplighter Yearbook (Calgary, Alberta Canada)

Page 39 text:

centuries of development in our basic sciences. Truly, as graduates of today, and looking forward to still greater advances in the next quarter century, you are stand¬ ing on a threshold of broad horizons that fill one with awe when one thinks of their potential for further progress. In your professional life and in your own life time I am sure that future developments in medical knowledge will parallel the extra¬ ordinary advances in the field of science that have led to the fantastic explorations of space that are going on in our world today. Truly your horizon is without limit¬ ation. Its width, scope and depth for your future cannot be foreseen at present but can only be anticipated by the rapidity of progress that we have seen in the past and which has been so greatly accelerated in the last fifteen years. The ever broadening scope of the future brings demands upon you which, like the advances in medicine, I know are securely built on the scientific knowledge of the past and traditions and fortitude of your predecessors in bringing your profession to its present honored and respected status in our community life. I would remind you of your debt to your predecessors for the improved working conditions of your life during your under graduate and graduate days. These changes did not come about easily. Your predecessors in nursing had a tremendous battle on their hands to gradually bring about the present eight hour day. Also a forty hour week for under graduates with actual time for personal pleasure or improvement of the mind or body in other than professional work was unheard of twenty years ago. Many factors took part in bringing about this evolution of improvement in working conditions. Competitively, one could not expect girls to leave high school and undergo three years of rigorous training for their R.N. and graduate to a twelve hour work day, while their high school classmates would take a six months business course and immediately obtain employment in the business world with a forty hour week plus coffee breaks. Present conditions have been hard to attain but are of great benefit. To obtain the required number of nurses and perform all of the nursing duties in the reduced number of working hours per week, the sub-nursing aspects of bed¬ side nursing care were taken out of the hands of the nurse and performed by ancillary services. With this relief in the work load, the same number of nurses on the reduced number of working hours per week could perform adequately and effectively the essential nursing services. This reduction in hours was really a general sociologic trend in all phases of community life which required a great deal of leadership to bring about its application into the world of nursing. Coincident with these improvements, the advances and strides in medicine raised the ceiling of responsibility accepted by your profession to the elevated level that it maintains today. To illustrate this point of increased responsibility, let us consider a blood transfusion. A few years ago, a blood transfusion required the donor and the patient both present in the operating room with a surgeon and an assistant or-intern attending each one. I might say that the enthusiasm of the surgeon taking the blood from a donor sometimes produced seven hundred and fifty or even one thousand cc’s of blood but the lack of understanding of the clotting mechanism of blood meant that the patient might get four or five hundred cc’s of this mammoth transfusion and the balance was left as evidence on the ceiling, the walls and the drapes. This is not hearsay, I have seen it from the position of the donor. Today with the modern facilities of the Red Cross Blood Service, a transfusion is ordered by the attending physician and administered to the patient on the ward by a nurse who is trained in intravenous medication. Another example, is your use of the stethoscope in determining blood pressures. Formerly, the stethoscope was kept under cover and only used by an attending physician. Today, one sees girls in the under graduate stage of training checking blood pressure with the stethoscope and noting signs of impending shock. This is an increase in responsibility on the nurse that has saved many lives by initiating treatment for impending shock rather than waiting for shock to become well established. One further example, I can well recall in our intern days taking emergency calls at any time of the day or night to treat post-operative distention by passing a stomach tube and doing a gastric lavage.In cases of acute dilatation of the stomach this procedure might have to be repeated as often as every half hour much to the patients discomfort. Today, a nurse passes a nasal catheter and establishes con¬ tinuous suction drainage and then supervises this more efficient drainage and thereby avoids serious complications with a minimum of discomfort to the patient and a more satisfactory result attained.

Page 38 text:

ADDRESS TO THE GRADUATING NURSES H.C.H. 1960 Greeting: Mr. Chairman, Graduating Class of 1960, Right Reverend Monsignor Anderson, and Reverend Sisters of Charity. I accepted the honor created by the invitation to address you, the Graduating Class of 1960, with considerable misgivings as to my ability to perform this office in a manner suitable and equal to this great occasion. However, I am a mere mortal such as Shakespeare described when he wrote in Henry the Fifth - “but if it be a sin to covet honor I am the most offending soul alive.” Thus I accepted the invitation. Along with this flattery to my ego I considered my admiration and respect for your training school which has grown through the years of association with it and felt it my duty to face this task and bring to you some of my thoughts and obser¬ vations acquired through this period. I realized I had another unusual qualification for acceptance. I have lived a large part of my life in the home environment of nursing influence. Born and raised by a graduate nurse, my mother’s professional philosophy was later supplemented by my elder sister’s interpretation of your profession so that this particular home influence continued from infancy throughout the formative years until graduation from the University and later becoming established in medical practice followed subsequently by marriage. Some years later, a thi rd generation of nurses in our home added her personal volumes to my education of under-graduate thinking. Truly I have been exposed to the influence of the nursing profession allmylife. By virtue of this personal exper¬ ience, I feel compelled to present your view point and extend my remarks to include a word of admonition to my fellow practitioners. We the medical profession, ar»e studied, respected and admired: and at time honestly criticized in fact on occasion brilliantly lampooned and realistically caricatured by the observations of our nursing confreres. We should never forget that our hospital work is astutely assessed by an observant audience at all times. We are in the position where we must be pre¬ pared to have our work and our behaviour pattern examined by many keen eyes studying us for individual points of strength, weaknesses, quirks and personal idiosyncracies. In the last quarter of a century the advancing strides in the science of medicine have thrown a great increase in responsibility on your profession. Today, your train¬ ing includes many phases of treatment which you accept as common place, whereas a few years ago, some of these tasks were considered only in the realm of the pract¬ icing doctor. Your sphere of influence has thus widened, not only in the area of patient care, but also on the medical profession and the public at large. Now that you have attained your full academic stature of Registered Nurse, you cannot personally remain insular in your thinking or nondescript in your appearance be¬ cause of the elevated position of your profession and its ever widening sphere of influence which emanated from your daily life. This position of influence will be maintained and grow still further as a result of your excellent training applied in your work. You recent graduates have enjoyed the benefits of training with m any previously undreamed of ancillary services working behind you in our ultra-modern hospitals with facilities far beyond the comprehension of our predecessors. You have an armamentatarium of drugs vaccines, blood banks, antibiotics and chemother¬ apeutic agents, but, most important of all, you are trained in their scientific use and application. You have also inherited a tradition of dedicated service to mankind created in somewhat different surroundings. In our mind’s eye, we can see Florence Night¬ ingale, following her great Crimean adventure, by lantern light in the rat infested workhouses of her day. This spirit of Dedication has been carried down through the years to you, by such individuals as the late Miss Gertrude Hall, whose whole life has been a symbol of Dedication. Truly the environment has changed but the dedi¬ cation of your profession remains constant. The tradition of service is your birth¬ right in the nursing profession, its perpetuation is your responsibility of the future. The sincerity of your dedication combined with your success in the course of your training are assurance to us all that you will make your personal contribution to further increase this prestige of your chosen profession. Great strides of medical progress have been made in the hundred and forty five years this spirit of dedicated service was created. Probably the greatest of these strides have been made in the last thirty years. As a result, my contempor¬ aries in medicine and the nursing profession have been exposed to and benefited more by scientific medical advance in our day than in any other era of medicine. We are privileged to have seen modern medicine by the addition of many discoveries of the last quarter of a century, built its glorious superstructure on the solid foundation of

Page 40 text:

One could go on citing many other responsibilities which are routinely accepted by your profession that were unheard of a matter of a few years ago. You, the Graduating Class of 1960, have accepted this increase in nursing responsibility as a matter of course. You have been trained to a high degree of perfection in applying your advanced technical knowledge. I might say that you have also been exposed to the living examples of the highest idealism and dedication to your profession in the environment of your Training School. I would like to suggest that you humbly recognize the contribution of your predecessors in building up the profession to its present stature. In acknowledging the work you in your turn have done to attain your degree, I would remind you of the statement by Bacom - “I hold every man a debtor to his profession.” Thus your diploma creates a debt and demands a continuing contri¬ bution on the part of each one of you for an individual effort to build your profession still higher and greater in line with the progress of the times, further adding to the inheritance you have received tonight, for your successors of the next generation. Your attainment in graduation has created a debt from you to your profession and demands a dedication of inspired service in your future professional life. Thus, in conclusion, I want to sincerely thank your predecessors in nursing for building securely the structure of the nursing profession that you are inheriting today and in congratulating you on your success, to quote to you the admonition of one of the world’s greatest medical men. Sir William Osier, ‘‘that we are here to add what we can to--not to get what we can from - Life . Dr. H. V. Morgan’s Address Delivered to Graduating Class of Nurses Holy Cross Hospital, October 1960.