Brief Statements From a Council of Medical Workers by L., A. H.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 26, 1914

Brief Statements From a Council of Medical Workers

By L., A. H.

THERE was recently held at Takoma Park a council of available members of the Medical Department for the purpose of considering several questions of importance. The council was authorized by officers of the North American Division. Reports of the council will be duly given. Following are some of the statements of principles given by various individuals. More will follow later:—

Spirituality Our Real Asset

Our sanitariums should be centers of spiritual revival.

The greatest resource of power in our work is the power of God.

We must be spiritually right if we would exert a drawing power.

Scientific skill and efficiency are essential, but we shall not win out by these alone.

The world has men of greater scientific skill than we. It has greater facilities than we. We cannot compete with it on its own ground. We have truth that the world does not have and does not discern. This truth will do for us what worldly skill and material equipment cannot do.

Prayer has a place in our work that will be appreciated more as we develop our spiritual experiences. Through its power much will be done that we may not now expect.

The development of the spiritual side of our work will strengthen the confidence of God's people in it, and will secure their support. This will mean much toward sanitarium success.

The worship hour of the sanitarium should be a means of practical spiritual uplift, and not be allowed to become a matter of routine or formal program, perhaps of dread more than of enjoyment. Every member of the family should receive benefit from it.

We should encourage the study of "The Testimonies for the Church" by our workers. Those who are well grounded in the principles therein presented are better prepared to withstand the many influences that will seek to draw them away from present truth.

A Missionary Training

Our training of nurses must be a training of missionaries.

Acceptable candidates for a missionary training should be missionaries to begin with.

The training course should be but the finishing touch to the life preparation of the missionary.

The training course should embody experience in missionary work, so that the missionary spirit will be kept alive.

We should emphasize Christian experience and insist that it is the first requisite for admittance to the nurses' training course.

We should not accept persons as candidates to the nurses' course whose Christian experience and missionary spirit would not make them acceptable for conference employment.

The sanitarium is itself a broad missionary field. Nurses need the qualifications of true missionaries in order properly to fill their place in sanitarium work.

Nurses should not come to the sanitarium with the idea that they are mere employees. They must realize that they are a part of the working force of the institution in carrying on its missionary work.

Some nurses are always getting missionary opportunities, and some never get them. The difference is not in the patients, but in the nurses; and the longer they go without doing missionary work, the harder it is for them to do it.

The reason some workers do not do missionary work is that they do not know how to do it. They have not had the preparation. We must see that they get it. We should give them a training that will be a missionary experience and will better fit them for the work they must do when through training.

Nurses should lose sight of the dollar side of their work by seeing the greater side. Their motives should be higher than to work merely for the money. They should not look at the money part any more than the minister or other missionary worker should do so. Five nurses of the right kind are worth more than twenty-five of the other kind.

We expect the nurse to be careful in observing the pulse, temperature, and other indicators of the patient's physical condition; should we not also require a careful observation of the patient's spiritual condition, and have reports on the same, so that intelligent spiritual effort can be put forth? Is our work done when we have looked after the patient's physical needs?

Education and Efficiency

Education is not the most important requisite for student nurses.

Education has its place, however, and students should have enough of it to enter upon their course intelligently.

Students should be mature enough to realize the importance of the work they are doing, and to show stability in doing it.

The graduate nurse may be called into positions where she will meet all classes of people. Education will help to qualify for this.

Nursing is an important life work. It is a high calling, an exalted profession, and it deserves a good preparatory training.

The more preparation our prospective student nurses can obtain in our schools, the better it will be. The student nurse should be prepared to do good work the first year of institutional connection.

Nurses should be fully qualified to enter conference work at home or abroad when they are graduated. They must have a general education in addition to their nurses' training in order to do this.

Our aim should be to train students for denominational work rather than prepare them to meet the requirements of State boards. Their preparatory education should have this same purpose as well.

We are to prepare skillful mechanics, as it were, in massage, Swedish movements, etc. Our nurses must show efficiency in the various branches of their profession, or the work itself will be brought into disrepute. The nurses' course is the last end of a nurse's training, so she must have her education first, as she will not get it afterward.

It is true that Peter and John were not educated men, but neither did they do the work of a Paul. Consecrated education can be used by the Lord. There is plenty of room in our cause for education of the right sort. We must know how to give it properly and how to make good use of it.

As teachers in our training schools, we often lose time because students are not able to comprehend what we are trying to tell them. They should spend more time in school getting a foundation education. Our nurses' training schools have their special work to do, and should not have to do the work that can be done in our other schools.

L., A. H.