Nursing -- (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Hygiene OF The Sick-room And Ward.?Ventilation? Temperature.?Light.?Disposal Of Excreta, Soiled Dressings And Soiled Linen. A real appreciation of the causes of disease and the care of the sick is impossible for anyone who does not possess a good understanding of the laws governing health. Hence it follows that a course in hygiene and its allied branches, bacteriology, practical chemistry, physiology and the elements of physics, should precede the practical nursing of the patients. No department of a nurse's work should appeal more forcibly to her than the hygiene of the sick-room. She should thoroughly grasp the general principles which underlie the subject, and endeavor to apply them in the minutest detail. Thoroughly clean surroundings and a constant supply of pure, fresh air arc the ideal conditions, but the question how these can best be secured may at times tax our ingenuity to its utmost. In well-planned hospitals these desiderata have usually been fully provided for, and it will be the nurse's duty simply to see that the means to this end, in so far as they are entrusted to her care, receive intelligent attention. Nurses are guilty of culpable inattention who slight this daily and hourly feature of their work. A nurse should constitute herself, as it were, the ward thermometer and barometer, and train her senses to note any change in the ward atmosphere. She shouldnever come into the room or ward from the outside air without noticing particularly whether any disagreeable odor be present or if the air be heavy and close; arid if there be any suggestion of impurity, steps should be taken at once to remove the cause. Even in the absence of the means usually employed she should be able to detect by her own sensations a temperature too high or too low, ...