Making Good on Private Duty

Making Good on Private Duty

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Title: Making Good On Private Duty
Author: Harriet Camp Lounsbery
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MAKING GOOD ON PRIVATE DUTY
MAKING GOOD ON PRIVATE DUTY
PRACTICAL HINTS TO GRADUATE NURSES
BY
HARRIET CAMP LOUNSBERY, R.N.
PRESIDENT WEST VIRGINIA STATE NURSES' ASSOCIATION
SANITARY SCHOOL INSPECTOR FOR CHARLESTON
INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT
"Not to be ministered unto, but to minister"

PREFACE
Though technic is constantly changing, methods improving, and the
teaching in our schools grows better and more comprehensive, the old
problems in private work are ever to be faced, and still the young sister
in our nursing world needs to be counselled, guided and helped. It is for
these young private duty nurses that this book has been written.

For six years I went up and down one of our large cities doing private
nursing, and I can remember, as if it were but yesterday, the curious
little sinking of the heart I used to feel, as I mounted the steps of a
house where there was a new patient needing my care. "Would I do
everything right?" "Could I please the patient and the friends?" "Would
the doctor be satisfied with my efforts?" "How would I feel when I was
leaving?" "Encouraged or hopeless?" "Happy or sad?" A strange house
looks so forbidding, "would this one ever look friendly?" There is time,
while walking up the steps, for these and many more such thoughts to
crowd into the nurse's mind. Once in the presence of the patient,
however, all this quickly changes, and action puts all wondering and
doubt to flight.
The "hints" here given are the fruit of my own experience and that of
the graduates of the school of which I was the superintendent. Many
long talks we had, when they felt the need of coming back to their
hospital home for advice and comfort. It is an earnest wish to help the
young graduate over the intricate paths that the inexperienced nurse
must often tread that has led me to revise some early contributions
[Footnote: Printed by permission of the Trained Nurse.] to the Trained
Nurse and write a few new ones, which have within the past year
appeared in the American Journal of Nursing.
In the chapter "Hints to the Obstetrical Nurse," there is little or nothing
that is commonly taught in the class-room.
All of that is so well done, repetition here would be tiresome. All the
asepsis is familiar to every graduate. She knows how to sterilize any
and every thing, but sometimes she does not know the best way to wash
and dry the baby's little shirts or knitted shawls. Sometimes she will not
realize that if the layette cannot be purchased at a store, old table linen
makes the best diapers for the newborn baby, and that his pillowcase
should not have embroidery in the center.
I wish in this part to give the nurse such hints that she may be able to
help any woman who wishes to prepare for her confinement. I have
been asked so many times to tell a young expectant mother just what to
get, that I have made for convenience as full a list as is necessary for

any baby or mother, with some hints as to the washing of the baby. The
rest it is expected every nurse who graduates from a training-school
would know. The table for calculating an expectant confinement was
cut from a medical paper and given me by a physician some years ago.
He did not know who wrote