Winnipeg General Hospital School of Nursing - Blue and White Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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Co tije (grabuating Class 1962 Dr. P.H.T. Thorlakson As you approach the day of your graduation, it will be emphasized again, as it was at your initiation, that you are joining the ranks of a high and noble profession. That is true. What do we actually mean when we repeat year after year such impressive, high sounding words. No single sentence can define and explain their full meaning. Considered in their truest and finest sense they stress, amongst other things, the importance of your personal attitude and your individual skills acquired before and during the course of your nursing education. They emphasize the close relationship of the individual nurse to the individual patient. They also mean that the public recognizes the fact that, at a time of great suffering and need, you will be at the bedside to comfort, to relieve pain and anxiety, and to assist in the recovery of the patient. At these critical periods your response, your every word and your actions are important. With each act of nursing, therefore, it is you who will make the profession noble or otherwise. In the final analysis, this reference to a high purpose and high achievement represents a constant challenge to each and every nurse both before and after graduation. In other words, the public ' s opinion and the nursing profession ' s evaluation of its own position is not something static and permanently achieved by the devoted work and sacrifices of your predecessors. I wish to emphasize one more important truth. You may hear someone say that the attitude of the nurses has changed, that they are not as willing to devote the same time or effort on behalf of the patient as the nurses did in that era of time which is referred to, rather loosely, as the good old days . In every day and in every age, this type of unfavourable comparison of the present generation has and will be made. You will come to realize that the public and the individual has a short memory and fortunately most people tend to relive the good days of their youth and to remember those kind and considerate and helpful people who have come into their lives. I firmly believe that there are just as many and more people now prepared and willing to sacrifice time and convenience to help their neighbours. If you expect kindness and extend it to others, you will, as a rule, re¬ ceive kindness in return. If you are inclined to be hypercritical in your attitude towards others, you will always 11

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tubcnt Council 1962 BACK ROW, Left to Right: M. Blott, I. Richard, S. Steel, S. Guthrie, M. Giesbrecht, A.McVicar, J. Baldry, C. Doern. FRONT ROW: B. Sutherland, H. McAskill, K. Newton, L. Sloan, S. Lundstrom. Yearbook i£ taff 1962 BACK ROW, Left to Right: L.F. Clayton, E. Cleland, I. Christison, M. Gray, P. Smith, S. Guthrie, D. McLennan, E. Lundy, D. Proche. FRONT ROW: G.M. Stonehouse, H. McAskill, I. Rickard, J. Ure, M. Forrest.

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find something to criticize. That, after all, is human nature, which can, at times be at its best and at other times in the same day and in the same individual be at its worst. How significant is the nurses approach to her patients’ problems? Recently a visitor to the Winnipeg General Hospital was sitting beside the bed of an elderly, very sick man. This visitor reported the following incident to me. The patient had been very ill for over a month, requiring a great deal of nursing care. In came a young student nurse who had been on the ward during the first part of the patient’s illness but who had been transferred a week before to a nother service in the hospital. With a cheerful smile she said simply: ”1 am off duty for the moment so I thought I would run down here just to see how you are getting along. I believe you look much better. I see that you have a visitor so I’ll come again to see you”. Such thoughtfulness is excellent treatment and surely contributed something of real value to this patient’s recovery. This kind of personal interest and individual approach takes place in many forms and in many rooms in the hospital day and night. It is never recorded on the hospital chart and is observed, at the time, only by the grateful patient. It serves to give meaning and nobility to the profession of nursing. The message that I would like to leave with the graduating class of 1962 is, in essence, that you are living in the most exciting and most rewarding period in the history of mankind. Never in the history of medicine, in which nursing plays an increasingly important role, have there been such opportunities to make of it a truly noble profession. Never before have the ’’healing” professions, as a group, had such opportunities to assist at performing miracles with the aid of new specific drugs unknown thirty years ago. A relatively short time ago many diseases such as tuberculosis, scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhoid fever, smallpox, poliomyelitis, puerperal and surgical infections and others, carried a high death rate and a high incidence of persistent chronic invalidism. Now, all of these dread diseases and others can be prevented or cured. Modern hospital facilities and many new operative techniques are available today to assist the surgeon and his staff correct deformities and remove and cure disease more safely and in much shorter time than was possible two or three decades ago. You are indeed fortunate to have arrived at your graduation in the year 1962. Now the community and the nation are being presented with such challenging opportunities for cooperation between many public and private agencies in the care of the sick, in education and research. The total health program of a nation has become a vast co-operative effort. In spite of the many difficulties, obstacles and misunderstandings inherent in the need to adjust to new situ¬ ations we will, I am confident, gradually evolve and finally achieve an effective partnership in an all out attack on basic human needs and on many common and pressing human problems without losing during the period of transition, our present high standards of individual care, our freedom of action or of choice. You as a nurse and as a citizen of this country will participate in this great adventure. May I congratulate you on the successful completion of your course of nursing education and training and at the same time wish you happiness and fulfillment of your hopes in the years that lie ahead. P.H.T. Thorlakson, M.D. 12