![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
THE NURSE'S QUALIFICATIONS.---The qualifications required to be a successful nurse are necessarily of a high order, and this applies not only to the trained nurse, but to her embryo sister who wishes to adopt nursing as a calling.
In the first place she must be not only physically, but constitutionally strong. She must be not only well formed, but must have certain powers of resistance. A girl, for example, who is subject to sick headaches, or who readily "knocks up," will never make a good nurse. The best type of nursing girl is one who is tall and strong, and who has a certain suppleness of movement. One who is accustomed to play lawn-tennis, who can ride, and skate, and row, makes the best material. If she can dance, especially if she is an enthusiastic dancer, it is a great advantage, for graceful carriage is a thing to be cultivated, and nothing is more distasteful in a sick-room than a suspicion of clumsiness. If in addition to being well formed she is favoured with good looks, it is all in her favour, for doctors readily recognise the influence of an attractive person in the management of refractory patients.
A nurse who aspires to rise in her profession should have a soft and evenly modulated voice, for harsh notes jar on the ears of sensitive patients. With regard to her general education she must be able to speak her own language correctly, and if she has a smattering of French and German so much the better. She should be able to write a good hand, and should have an elementary knowledge of how to keep accounts. Respecting her moral attributes, it may be said that a girl who has been brought up in a country parsonage, and has had little experience of the world, is hardly fitted for hospital work. In the wards she will be brought in constant contact with people of various modes of thought, and if she is unable to adapt herself to her surroundings, her novitiate will of necessity be a very uncomfortable one.(Lots more here: enw.org/1895_Nursing.htm )
Comments
And I am not convinced that "being well formed" and "favoured with good looks" is soley for the benefit of the management of refractory patients, or whether it is a bonus for the doctors she might be working with. Hmmm...
As to good looks etc--well it depends ;)
P.S. As well as this: "Very sorry to knock you up, Watson, but it seems to be the common fate this morning--Mrs Hudson was knocked up, she retorted upon me, and I on you"...:P
Edited 2011-05-08 06:13 pm (UTC)