Presbyterian St Lukes Hospital School of Nursing - Alpha Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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St. Luke ' s Hospital. In meeting this ideal the patients will naturally receive the very best of care. Today an out-patient dispensary is recognized as one of the most essential features of a comprehensive hospital service. Many patients could become out-patients earlier if there was a dispensary which would attend to their future treatments. The logical place for such a dis- pensary is in connection with the hospital where the original treat- ment was given. Furthermore, this dispensary would afford a suitable means of following up patients after they left the hospital. It should be open every night with some member of the staff in attendance in order that those who must work could receive its benefits with the least economic loss. One of the greatest needs, not only for St. Luke ' s, but for all hospitals in Chicago, is an adequate con- valescent center. A great many chronic cases are held in the hos- pital simply because their home environment is not suitable for con- valescence. The hospital could be freed of this burden and the patient would recover more rapidly, if a well organized convalescent center was provided. With a better understanding of the needs of the hospital and with an ever increasing co-operation be- tween the Medical Board, and with all striving earnestly and unselfishly for these ideals of service, these plans for the future of St. Luke ' s will be made possible. The Board desires to offer its active co-operation in any forward movement along these lines that the Nurses and Training School may inaugurate. [17]

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various departments of Medicine; Surgery; Gynecology; Obstetrics; Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat; Pathol- ogy, and X-Ray, there have been estabhshed many adjuvants to the regular Hospital service which has extended the usefulness of the work to a marked degree. Many of the medical and surgical services at the Hospital have estab- lished follow-up clinics where dis- charged patients can report back at stated intervals for examination and advice. The effect of their home conditions and occupations upon their physical states are noted and often, through the aid of the Social Service Department, the deleterious conditions are removed. In this way a practical system of preven- tion of new diseases and of recur- rences of the old disease is being developed. For five years St. Luke ' s has had a Social Service Department which has rendered valuable assistance in the homes of our poor patients, has removed many extraneous worries which have tended to delay recovery, and has acted as the friend and adviser of numbers of our patients. Recently this Social Service Depart- ment has been reorganized and ade- quately financed by the Women ' s Board of the Hospital. It is hoped that by co-operating with other relief agencies in the city some service can be rendered to every ward patient. It is the ideal of the Hospital, aided by its Social Service Department, to see that every ward patient is cured of his ailment as far as is humanly possible; is placed in the best environment possible to fully convalesce, and, finally, is su- pervised until he again becomes a useful economic unity of society, be- fore the interest of the Hospital in the patient is relinquished. The Occupational Therapy De- partment of the Hospital is render- ing valuable service in securing this maximum restoration of our pa- tients. It is ably abetted in this effort by the Physiotherapy work now conducted in the wards. Plans and Ideals for Future Work Few institutions in the country community of the land, setting up have the opportunity of perpetuating standards which they have been their usefulness and of influencing taught, is equally fundamental work the health and well-being of the of the hospital. It behooves the nation that is afforded hospitals, hospital, therefore, to develop the The immediate care of the sick and highest of standards and to see to injured is their primary work, but it that these young men and women the training of thousands of nurses are given the best possible training, and internes who go out into every This, in a word, typifies the ideal of [i6]

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