Medical Convention Report
By L. A. HANSEN
The Training and Work of Nurses
THE nurse and her work received much consideration in our recent medical conventions. The interest shown in this phase of our medical missionary work was gratifying and bespoke an earnest desire on the part of leaders to see our nurses occupying a place of greater strength in connection with our denominational work. The discussions recognized that we have in these workers an asset that should be wisely conserved, and that more can be accomplished for the good of nurses and their work in our institutions and in the field than is now being done. Dr. H. W. Miller presented the matter in a few remarks, as follows: “There has not been as full appreciation of the work of our sanitariums as training schools as there should be. This is an important feature aside from the regular sanitarium work. We have about as many students in our sanitarium training schools as we have in our colleges and academies, and the education we give is equivalent to any other school work, take it year for year. We regard our conference educational work of sufficient importance to have educational secretaries to look after it, but we do not have such secretaries for our medical educational work. We do not have medical secretaries devoting time to this work alone. “Perhaps one of the first things we should do in organizing this educational work is to establish standards. We should have uniform entrance requirements. These are often too low. We should seek to secure a mature class of students. The work of a nurse is too responsible to place on immature girls. “The preliminary education should be sufficient to give the student a proper influence and a fitness for her work and studies. Our nurses should be prepared to rightly represent our work and present the truths we hold. Twelfth-grade work is not too much of a preliminary requirement. Bible workers need a good preliminary requirement. We have many calls for nurses who can do Bible work and if they are to be properly qualified for it they must have proper preparation. “We must give serious consideration to the training of workers for this cause. A doctor would not be prepared to enter upon his work with only his textbook study. He must have practical experience. So must we give our nurses a practical training if they are to be prepared for field work on graduation. “Adopting higher standards will mean limiting the number of people who will take the training, but it will only be an elimination of such as are not the best prepared to take it. It will also mean limiting the number of schools giving training, but it will be an elimination of such schools as are not prepared to give a training according to the standard we set. “A fourteen-grade academy would not grant an A. B. degree. If it did, the one receiving such a degree would be placed under embarrassment in not having received an education equivalent to the degree. So in our training schools we should give an education and training that will qualify according to the diploma we give. The effect of such a step will be to reduce the number of nurses graduated each year. We will19have fewer nurses in the field but we will have better ones, and this will enable us to find more ready employment for graduate nurses than we now can. “And here we come to a problem that is giving us a great deal of anxiety. A few of our nurses are being sent to foreign fields and some find work here at home, but we are losing many of them from active service in our cause. Our conferences are not offering them employment because they are not well prepared to do conference work. It is a serious thing for our young people not to be able to find suitable work after taking a course of training with the purpose of becoming well-qualified workers. It must be that there is fault in the training. Those responsible should do everything possible to help solve this problem.” Prof. F. Griggs: “The problem of employing our young people in this cause is one of the greatest with which we have to deal. It is a pitiable fact that so many of our young people are going into the world to seek employment. I think the fault lies with us who have to do with the shaping of their education. We must have all our young people employed in this cause in some way; they are the greatest asset of this denomination, but we are not using it as we ought. When I was a young man there was no opening but the ministry, and nothing for the young woman, but now we have every opportunity to use every faculty. We have reached a time when the whole rank and file of our people are to be ready for the finishing of the work.” Dr. D. D. Comstock thought that if the educational features of our sanitarium work were eliminated it would mean great loss to the institution, taking out the life and spirit of the work. While every sanitarium might not have a training school, all should carry some educational work. Speaking to the point of standards, he had seen young people taking the nurses and medical courses who should never have been in either one. “It would solve our problems if we did our weeding out at the beginning; then there would be no question as to whether these young people would be accepted by conferences.” Elder I. H. Evans: “I would like to emphasize one suggestion, and that is that we strengthen our Bible work in the nurses’ course. There are many conferences that would gladly receive these workers if they were assured they were capable of doing Bible work. I think the Division Conference could place not less than twenty nurses in the various conferences if we could only give assurance that they had had good evangelistic work. “No class of Bible workers should be prepared to do better work than the consecrated, God-fearing nurse who is capable of teaching the truth. The trained nurse who is well qualified to do Bible work has a better means of getting into the homes of the people than one without that training. We cannot pay them large salaries, but the schools should breathe into the workers such a spirit of sacrifice that they will be willing to do this kind of work; but no man can breathe the spirit of Christ into another if he does not have it himself. We need to strengthen our Bible work. I think it is a pity that those who are graduated from the nurses’ course are not required to master the Bible as thoroughly as any other subject.” Remarks by other speakers will be given in another article, together with recommendations on this important subject.