Proceedings of the Second Pan American Scientific Congress; Washington, U.S.A., Monday, December 27, 1915 to Saturday, January 8, 1916 Volume 5 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ...has 12 college women in its training school at this time, while out of 200 students in the Johns Hopkins Training School 25 have university degrees. The next problem is the nature and scope of the course to be given in the training school itself. It is a matter of common knowledge that few such schools are to-day in a position to give to their pupils the training necessary to fit them adequately for the work of health nursing. Over a thousand such schools have come into existence since 1890, but their establishment has often been inspired less by educational ideals than by the desire to obtain unpaid assistance in the routine work of the hospitals with which they are connected. Too often standards of admission, which are of such importance in a profession demanding unusual physical and mental and personal qualifications, are sacrificed to the need for student nurses to do the work. Too often the applicant, once admitted, is subject to severe conditions of overwork and underfeeding and poor living accommodations. Always there are the educational weaknesses inherent in an undertaking which is not primarily educational in aim. The course is apt to be carelessly planned, the teachers those who chance to be available, the teaching what they happen to find it easiest to gi.vc, and the laboratory equipment hopelessly inadequate. Most fundamental of all is the problem of time. It is absurd to attempt to train the nurses we need for the public-health campaign by a course which involves two or three hours a week of theory and 50 to 6O hours in the wards, not hours of clinical instruction, but for the most part a routine of unenlightening and exhausting manual work. The relation between the hospital and the training school should be a symbiotic one;...