Queer Psychologist

The Nurse Mission of the Future Health

The Nurse Mission of the Future. The nurse of the future will not be merely a handmaiden to care for the sick body by deftly carrying out the doctor's orders. She will do this almost automatically as a matter of course, and skilfully; but it will be the merest beginning of her mission. That mission itself will be to eliminate the causes of disease; to teach the ways of health, to supervise the sanitary conditions of city, town, and country. Practical ways and the wise means to this end will be taught in her hospital, which will become a community center with clinics, teaching through its doctors and nurses the way to health, instead of merely treating and advising the cases as they come. But the greatest contribution of the nurse of the future will be a wide-spread desire for health and will to health, rather than a desire and will to avoid discomfort and pain and danger of death.

This will to health will doom in the sane mind the disease-accepting attitude. It will do all that common sense and applied medical science can do to strengthen the body; then it will take what life brings in the way of unavoidable disease and weakness and inability, with an uncringing mind. It will hold the mind's attitude to serenity and poise and accomplishment within the necessary limits of its disordered body. It will be master of its dwelling and make the most of the little the body can give, and force all bearable weakness and pain to be stepping-stones to endurance and will-strength and cheer. It will not accept physical limitations as final things. If life must be lived in a prison-house it will be its own jailer, and fill the rooms with flowers, music, friends, and happiness.

No nurse is competent to help her patient to overcome any curable physical weakness, and keep the mind serene in the face of the incurable, until she herself has learned that the will to health is capable of transforming disease of body, from disaster, into health of mind and soul.

The nurse of the future will know the laws of mind as she knows the course of disease; she will be dedicated to such wise care of existing disease as will lead to prevention of future disease; and she will be a sworn, trained ally of the health-accepting mind.

The Nurse of Life and of the Sciences

The Nurse of the Future. The student of life and of the sciences which deal with the origin and development of the human race, and with the relations of man to man and nation to nation--such sciences as biology and anthropology, sociology and ethics and history--comes to the conclusion that life exists for the development of mind. And mind is not merely intellect, but the only gateway we know to character, to soul. The deepest students of human science see no reason for life except as it "evolves" a perfect mind--man's goal, his ideal. And this visioned perfect mind is one which adjusts itself without friction to the body, making it fulfil the laws of health that it may help and not hinder mind's progress; one which adjusts itself to people and things, co-operating with other minds to develop manners and customs and laws of the most satisfactory community living; one which forces things to be servants of its will; one which makes harmony of life by fulfilling the laws of the soul as well as of the intellect and of the body.

If we believe that life exists for the development of mind into a force of intellect and character and soul, then we need not ask why a nurse should know something of the laws of mind. She does not ask why she should know anatomy or pathology. Her work is dependent upon such knowledge. But if the center of life, the thing which makes the body a living, moving, acting agent instead of a clod, is mind; if the one thing which makes a difference between animal life and mineral and vegetable life is consciousness, i. e., mind; and if everything that affects that body, its organ, affects mind also--then surely no nurse can afford to learn only the rules of repair or of keeping in order the instrument of consciousness, without knowing what effect her efforts have on the mind itself. It is as though an ignorant maid accepted a piano as merely a piece of furniture to be kept clean and shining, and in her zeal to that end scrubbed the keyboard with soap and water which, dripping down into the body of the instrument, swells and damages its felts, rusts and corrodes its keys, and ruins its notes. When she knows that she may thus make impossible the beautiful sounds she has heard it give, and that the more carefully the keyboard is handled the more sure is the beauty resulting, her care is to keep it as free as possible of dust, to see that the top is down and the keyboard covered when she sweeps--and to clean it hereafter in such a way as to never injure its tone.

The Nurse Has a Much Greater Function

The nurse has a much greater function than merely to help in saving the body and keeping its machinery in order. If the aim of life is the strengthening and perfecting of the mind--that "urge" of life, then surely the nurse's big aim will be to help establish such health of body as leads toward health of mind. In the average man or woman this vital urge becomes temporarily blocked by the very weakness of the body it urges. The body must give the life-flame some fuel, or it dies out; but with very little fuel it flickers on, waiting, hoping for the more that it may burn strongly again. In the cases the nurse handles very often the "vital spark" has been poorly fed by the disabled body, and so discouragement or depression, or "loss of grip" results, or the flame continues to shine brightly with whatever little sustenance it receives, and so encourages the body to greater effort for it; or sinks into embers, glowing steadily though dully; or it burns wildly, recklessly--it becomes what we call "wild fire," that has no direction and no purpose save to burn up everything it can find.

In other words, the nurse deals with those in whom the "urge" is weakened--the depressed and discouraged; with those whose spirits never flag in their steady shining--those brave souls we could almost worship; and those others who hold grimly on with quiet grit and courage, but with no cheer; and with the unstable ones of neuropathic or psychopathic tendency who become hysteric or maniacal.

What will the nurse do for them all? Will not an understanding of how to recall the ambition to live, the will to get well, and the grit to see the thing through, be an incalculable asset.

Better Opportunity for Will-Training

Training the Will. There is no better opportunity for will-training than the hospital affords the nurse. The constant necessity of acting against desire, of doing tasks which in themselves cannot be agreeable, calls for a developed will, while it gives it constant exercise. Moods of discouragement and depression cannot be indulged. The nurse must do her work no matter how tired or blue or "frazzled" she feels, if she is not too sick to be on duty; for all time lost, she knows, is to be made up to the hospital before training is completed.

Can this will to do, despite strong desire to the contrary, this mood control and the ability to disregard physical discomfort, be acquired; and if so, how?

It is a law of the mind and of the body that any task becomes easier by repetition. We found that automatic habit eases much of the strain of action. What seemed repulsive service to the probationer on her first day in the hospital, she forced herself to do because she wanted to be a nurse. She may go on through her three years unreconciled to these particular duties, yet holding herself to them because she likes other features of her work, or because she must earn her living and this seems the best avenue open to her, or because her will to become a nurse is strong enough to make her act continually against desire. And finally, for almost every nurse, the interest in the end to be attained overshadows the unpleasant incidents in its way. The tasks are actually easier by their constant repetition, and her feeling of repugnance becomes only a mild dislike. She has strengthened her will by continuing to act against desire. But there is a better way to the same goal.

The woman who has thought out the reasons for and against taking training; who has considered it carefully as a profession, and has chosen to put up with any obstacles in the way of becoming a graduate nurse, can find a happy adjustment to the disagreeable incidents it involves. Realizing that the paths of learning are seldom thoroughly smooth, she can resolve to use their very roughness for firmer footholds, as a means to self-control, as a fitting for the sterner hardships of self-support, of nursing the dangerously ill, alone, of meeting suffering and death in her patients with quiet courage and faith. In other words, she can meet the thousand and one personal services which in themselves might be disagreeable and prove pure drudgery, not merely with the stern will to do them because they are a necessary part of obtaining a desired end, but also for the sake of adding to the comfort and well-being of each patient in her care. The emotion of interest and kindly desire will ease the strain which will undergoes in demanding that she not shirk the disagreeable. For there is little stress in doing what we wish to do.

It is psychologically possible to find genuine pleasure in the meanest tasks if the doing is backed up by a strong desire to make life count as much for others as possible. The nurse who comes to realize the waste involved in carrying out against desire what reason proposes and volition dictates, will try to secure the co-operation of desire, and save will-force for more worthy accomplishment.

A constant opportunity for will-strengthening comes to many a nurse during the early weeks and months of training in the necessity of going on despite the sheer tiredness, the weary backs and swollen, tender, aching feet. The one who means to "see it through" disregards them as far as possible on duty, gets all the out-of-doors her time permits, takes special exercises to strengthen weak spots, and relaxes her body while she reads or studies or visits in her off-duty time. In the end, not only does her body adjust itself to the new work, but her will has become a better ally for the next demands upon it; her endurance is remarkably increased.

When she can accept hardship, drudgery, weariness of mind and body and perhaps of soul, the nagging of unco-operative patients, and the demands on her sympathies of the suffering; when she can meet these as challenges to develop a strong will--a will not only to endure, but to find happiness and give service through it all--then the nurse has learned the art of making every circumstance a stepping-stone to mastery and achievement.

Self-Correction a Primary Essential to the Nurse

Self-Correction. Accuracy in work, a primary essential to the nurse, can become automatic if she will demand of herself accuracy of perception, and concentrate on learning and doing until details almost take care of themselves; if she will correct her own work by the standards taught her, and recognize just why and wherein she falls short.

Not that she can always do things with the nicety in which they were taught. She cannot give eighteen ward patients in eight hours the same detailed care her private patients would receive if she had only two of them for the same length of time. In such a case she must often sacrifice refinements of detail in service; but there is no excuse for sacrificing accuracy in the necessary treatments of her charges.

The nurse merely chooses between the multitude of things which can be done for her ward, the important ones which must be done. Because she is rushed is no excuse for giving a poor hypodermic injection or a careless bed-bath.

Accuracy in doing the essential things should be so automatic that it takes not a whit more time than inaccurate doing; and such accuracy is chiefly dependent on constant self-correction when the task is still new, and on never letting up in practice until the details of the doing become practically automatic.

One Influenced By a Well-Balanced Emotional Life

A Well-Balanced Emotional Life. That big, broken-arm case on the ward cursed you yesterday because you would not loosen his splints. And you rushed from the room angry and humiliated, wishing you could quit nursing forever, and asked to be moved because you had been insulted. But that man cannot harm you. He has never known a real lady in his life before. His training from childhood has been to regard women as chattels to do man's bidding; his experience in life is that they usually do what he asks--women of his kind. Moreover, he has never had a serious pain before, and it is not to be endured.

Of course, the man must be dealt with and made to realize the distinction between his new surroundings and the old. Probably the intern or the doctor is the one to do it. Also he must be brought to apologize, or leave the hospital, perhaps. But he did not hurt you. Your own reaction did that. For outside things or people cannot damage what we are in ourselves. The way we respond to them does the harm. When you can control your expression of anger and humiliation, and substitute for your intense feeling a desire that such a patient may learn that pain is often the gateway to healing; that some respect for women may be kindled in him, so that eventually such an outburst in the ward may be impossible for him or for anyone who heard it; then you are choosing between emotions the one of helpfulness, for the one of justified indignation; and feeling has followed reason, rather than leading reason astray. The judgment which decides you to try methods which will shame or inspire some manliness into the patient was one influenced by a well-balanced emotional life.

If we would really acquire emotional poise, there are a few practical, proved methods we might adopt for ourselves.

When we can hold back the expression of the almost overpowering impulse or passion of anger and resentment and hurt; absolutely shut tight our lips until we can think; then wait until we can think without the strain of intense feeling, we will not only keep ourselves out of trouble, but will be able to calmly state our position, right the wrong done us if wrong there was, or recognize that we ourselves were wrong. For we seldom analyze the situation properly under the influence of strong feeling. If we want to accomplish anything with our words, let us wait until we can speak them without having to choke down our sobs or cram back our hot anger, or forcibly restrain ourselves from tearing things or slamming doors. After all that "wild fire" of emotion is gone, judgment will lead us to wisely reasoned action.