Mercy Hospital School of Nursing - Mercium Yearbook (Bay City, MI)

Page 75 text:

QEQEAEQLL'-'1Eff -1 If 11 1 1 'cn-az - .- . ,Al- H- , ff ,XA -1' x Q. 4 iifif-A xx! Y , .fftvt Q. .. N! fr . gr W Q llx JMC XA. X ,.A' q x 1 . nw.. N' X N K 2 .lv Www ,,, .Ad' AV1' ff-f I X ,ff ff'- fffM 'X - .. ...f. 'Q Q iHv1'mixx1u Kf f1::?iw ' ' I J I 2 K -zfflgz - W V 1, is f I , ,f ,. ..., , ,. 3351? 5 ,Ml . s Q . X, 1 ,,,....,. ,V Af. .X jg G 1 2, 1 'f 2 ' ' If U 56 , 22 JIIW -'TQ 7? I- g ' 'B A My f i.. 1 -:ig 5 vp,- K ' x xiffa' 1' X, may A ,v LW V wr 4, A Q 1: A wx fy.- ' f 'ag 'A A X M..-,,2,,?-QX521-f,,'Qf:' AM. v' , i,??V A, . , , Z 'Is I f 1, f 4 g vm 4 il K Hs x,,, ' 1-,f pw, , , Q, ,A Q vkx Xi, ff . way ix? 13 W ,E-Se as I IZ A ,f Uf1 l1 f YS., -A. :J ,f e fx--Axiq X , YY Nw I .7 f L'54- : 3,,, . R A V H , '51 T17 1 Qi. ZX '-. :Q.V ,Vf Q ...X V n x Ag '.,A 22 ':- Q - ,gn we .-. X , Q-S' . ,4 ff! -Q xx, X .M x ' E- it ' Qs. , Q idea: --.ln .-.-zysrr-.m::',.' L :14-. ...un MTWR. ,P ,- M :-f- xxs' -:ng .- - - .. ..X,... .I .X:.. Q. R ,, MF I ...-,.-,..,-- -U N , ,,L, ,M A ,,,- -L,-V-4 KLMQQL. A ,fx W, ' l'nf'-. . ., , 11-1, xxx: M, t If .....i...,- .. - ' A. ,L i633

Page 74 text:

:ll nz iuzgrx received three-eighths of a grain of morphine, makes the nurse omit the morning bath and let her sleep, instead of forcibly shaking her awake again. This attitude of mind is illustrated by the story of the private duty nurse who was called into an isolated lllinois farmhouse in the dead of the winter to a scarlet fever case. The child patient was apparently dying of exhaustion, because she could not sleep. The mucous membrane of nose and throat had become so badly swollen so that whenever she fell asleep the dried tongue stopped the childls breathing and she woke again. The nurse, watching the child, discovered the difliculty. Wrapped in a blanket, in an unheated bedroom in zero weather, she sat all night long at the bedside with a glass of water and a medicine dropper, letting fall drop after drop of water on the child's swollen tongue, so that the child slept peacefully all night through. That was more than kindness or sympathy. It called for endurance, for insight into what was wrong, and for ingenuity as to the remedy. This type of mind is probably what nurses and doctors mean when they speak of Hthe art of nursingf' It was described recently as characteristic of tithe nurse who knows what to doe- when. Finally, perhaps the most interesting and dramatic of the qualities which make for good nursing is a kind of acute perception which gives to some nurses what seems to the outsider an uncanny ability to know what is happening to the patient. It is sometimes spoken of as Nintuitionf' or the nurseis usixth sense.,7 It seems to be acquired by especially intelligent nurses, as a result of long hours of concentrated highly keyed attention to patients. These particular nurses become sensitive to extremely slight stimuli, such as scarcely perceptible changes in the color of a patient's skin, or the odor of the room, or the angle his hand makes with his wrist. It is this extreme responsiveness in slight stimuli which makes possible this story of a ward supervisor in a maternity hospital who said: live sort of got so l recog- nize patients who are going to need watching. There was one woman-for example- l had finished my rounds and was going off duty, but l couldn't get her off my mind. l had been in so see her and she seemed all right, but l had a hunch she wasn't. So l went back for another look. And believe me, one look was enough! l simply dove under the bed clothes and grabbed herl It was a postpartum hemorrhagefi Most good nurses would have recognized such a hemorrhage after it was well started. but only the exceptional nurse, peculiarly sensitive to extremely slight stimuli, would recognize it at its onset. Of these six characteristics, only manual skill is usually directly aimed for in training, and yet it is perhaps the least important of the series. The others are acquired in varying degrees by the more intelligent and experienced nurses. E. J. Persons, M. D. I -WI s. 1't't ' A - ,Q , . ' - ... ... l62l

Page 76 text:

.tl , gli. . In Surgical Days When in the O. R. room we go, Another cap we wear, Our locks must all be out of sight, For style we do not care. To package and to autoclave Our duty now we see, The other nurses haven't time, They busy seem to be. We rush into the room called HC, And then our scrubhings come, We scrub our hands, we scrub the floor, Our work is never done. Next comes LGAU with major ops. Oh, dear, what shall I do? With all the drapes and instruments, Sutures and sponges too. We next go to a room called uB,,' And then I guess we work, For all the germs we sure must kill And duty never shirk. The drums we know must now be packed And gloves get full of holes, So little patches we do cut And paste them on like soles. So now it's senior work we dog At this we do need pep, To make the things to smoothly run And keep the folks in step. When we can say farewell at last To all this high wide life, We smile and to ourselves We say, We,re glad there was no rife. E. Beaufore. ,i 2.1 4 ll'-IL sf i641