1887 Nursing Job Description

In addition to caring for your 50 patients, each bedside nurse will follow these regulations:

1. Daily sweep and mop the floors of your ward, dust the patient’s furniture and window sills.

2. Maintain an even temperature in your ward by bringing in a scuttle of coal for the day’s business.

3. Light is important to observe the patient’s condition. Therefore, each day fill kerosene lamps, clean chimneys and trim wicks.

4. The nurse’s notes are important in aiding your physician’s work. Make your pens carefully; you may whittle nibs to your individual taste.

5. Each nurse on day duty will report every day at 7 a.m. and leave at 8 p.m., except on the Sabbath, on which day she will be off from 12 noon to 2 p.m.

6. Graduate nurses in good standing with the director of nurses will be given an evening off each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if you go regularly to church.

7. Each nurse should lay aside from each payday a goodly sum of her earnings for her benefits during her declining years, so that she will not become a burden. For example, if you earn $30 a month, you should set aside $15.

8. Any nurse who smokes, uses liquor in any form, gets her hair done at a beauty shop or frequents dance halls will give the director of nurses good reason to suspect her worth, intentions and integrity.

9. The nurse who performs her labors [and] serves her patients and doctors faithfully and without fault for a period of five years will be given an increase by the hospital administration of five cents per day.

http://scrubsmag.com/a-list-of-rules-for-nurses-from-1887/

Florence Nightingale became a living legend as the 'Lady with the Lamp'. She led the nurses caring for thousands of soldiers during the Crimean War and helped save the British army from medical disaster.

This was just one of Florence's many achievements. She was also a visionary health reformer, a brilliant campaigner, the most influential woman in Victorian Britain and its Empire, second only to Queen Victoria herself.

When she dies in 1910, aged 90, she was famous around the world. But who was the real Florence Nightingale?

The Museum holds a unique collection of artefacts and is the only place where you can learn the full story of this remarkable woman.

The Museum is independent and has over 2000 artefacts owned by and associated with Florence Nightingale, the Crimean War, nursing and Florence Nightingales legacy. It is located on the site of the original Nightingale Training School for Nurses, at St Thomas’ Hospital on London’s vibrant South Bank.

Florence Nightingale was born in Italy on 12th May 1820. Despite opposition from her family she decided to devote her life to nursing and campaigning for better health care and sanitation for all. It was her work during the Crimean War that created the legend of the Lady with the Lamp and it was her experience here that drove her to continue, researching, writing and tirelessly campaigning.

After the Crimean War she demanded a Royal Commission into the Military Hospitals and the health of the Army, she began investigating the health and sanitation in the British Army in India, and the local population. Money which had been sent by the general public to thank her for her work in the Crimea was used to establish the first organised, training school for nurses, the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas’ Hospital.

Her greatest achievement was to make nursing a respectable profession for women. Florence's writings on hospital planning and organization had a profound effect in England and across the world, publishing over 200 books, reports and pamphlets.

Florence died at the age of 90, on 13th August 1910, she had become one of the most famous and influential women of the 19th century. Her writings continue to be a resource for nurses, health managers and planners to this day.


Heres to you, Florence.

kind of kewl,, shows a difference in how women are perceived now from how they were then,,,when nurses were assumed to be female and have to atone for their hard earned funds in ways that doctors(usually men) didnt have to

Remember that old cigarette slogan “You’ve come a long way, baby”? Not only have women come a long way, but so have nurses. Imagine how lost Florence Nightingale would feel if she were time-warped into this century!

Below are some fun facts about the early days at the prestigious Johns Hopkins nursing school and hospital.

* Johns Hopkins, the director of the nation’s first major railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio, was responsible for one of the most prestigious nursing schools in the country. It’s true. Hopkins, a philanthropist, bequeathed upon his death the largest donation ever in the United States ($7 million) to the Johns Hopkins Hospital. The School of Nursing opened at the same time as the hospital, in 1889.

* Back in Hopkins’ day, nursing wasn’t for slackers. On average, nurses worked 56 hours per week. For their hard work, the nurses were granted one shopping day around Christmas time. Of course, if they had online shopping back then, maybe the administrators would have thought that the one full day was excessive….

* Social life? What social life? With a workday that didn’t end until 7 p.m., and with a curfew at 10 p.m., a social life was pretty much a pipe dream for many nurses. The three hours off didn’t even give the nurses enough time to go see a full movie feature!

* Thinking of getting married? Only do so if you want to be told you can no longer work as a nurse. Until 1942, when nurses were needed during wartime, nurses were forbidden to marry. However, with their strict social policies (shift ending at 7 p.m. and curfew at 10 p.m.), one wonders how the nurses would have met someone anyway!

Sources:
http://webapps.jhu.edu/jhuniverse/information_about_hopkins/about_jhu/who_was_johns_hopkins/

Yeah. It was kind of different back then.

http://scrubsmag.com/historic-nursing-uniforms-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

Ah, the portrait of a nurse.

The freshly starched dress, that sharp little hat (oh, that hat!), the coveted pin; remnants of an era long forgotten.

Or are they? Just a few decades back, nurses were required to wear this cap. They had no choice but to button up that pinafore apron every day. And for what? Certainly not for sterilization, though that may have been the intent back then. Now we know better.

Join us as we remember the uniforms of decades past — and smile, because we’ll never force you to wear these outfits again. Ever. Unless you want to, of course.

Oh, wow. If I could just get me a hat like that.

Sounds like a whole lot of work but i wish the nurses now a days had a good sense of workmanship.

I really have to differ in opinion on that one. Any nurse that I have met in my lifetime, and I have met quite the few, have been worth their weight in gold, to say the least. I would take face value the knowledge any nurse told me about my condition way over any MD. They spend all their time working directly with patients, year after year, have to take continuing ed classes every 2 (it may be 1) years to renew their certificate and now have to have their masters to become a RN. I the 70's it was 2 year college, actually if you went to school specific for nurses you did the whole thing in 3. Md's have no knowledge (with the exception, perhaps, of specialists) that Nurses have, and can hardly answer you about your condition or medication that they are prescibing, having little or no experience with it. (Also trust my pharmacist for the Rx stuff) .
Yet they are treated poorly and never quite given the respect they deserve.

http://scrubsmag.com/historic-nursing-uniforms-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/2/

1854 - American Civil War

To the left is an 1856 lithograph of the hospital ward at Scutari where Florence Nightingale worked (via Wikipedia).

In 1854, Florence Nightingale served during the Crimean War (one of the bloodiest wars in history), along with a staff of 38 volunteer nurses.

It was not until after the war that she discovered and advocated that sanitary living conditions were of great importance. There was not yet a nursing uniform, but instead a full-length dress similar to that of a nun.

Illustration in Harper's Weekly, 1862 article The Influence of Women

The nursing uniforms of the late 1800s were modeled after a nun’s habit (as pictured on the left). They were worn in order to properly identify nurses, and to provide a full-length, “fever-proof” shield to protect the visiting nurse from infection. You’ll notice, however, that although the gown covers most of the body, the nurse is not wearing gloves or a mask.

Lillian Wald

Although Florence Nightingale’s work served as an inspiration for nurses in the American Civil War, her teachings on sanitation were not convincing to her colleagues at the time.

Nurses continued to wear the long “fever-proof” gowns, with hats that served little purpose beyond identification. No gloves or masks were worn.

Pictured on the right is Lillian Wald, a nurse, social worker, and public health official in the late 1800s to early 1900s.

Next, from 1898 through the Spanish-American War

I had talked to a nurse at work and she must have studied the history of nursing because she brought up the role of cleanliness and nursing.

http://scrubsmag.com/historic-nursing-uniforms-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/3/

Historic nursing uniforms: the good, the bad and the ugly

First nurses at Sternberg Hospital, Chickamauga Park, Georgia, August 1898. Again, no masks or gloves, but the same full-length gown and apron to protect against infection, plus a new form of identification: the arm cuff with a large red cross.

In 1908, the Navy Nurse Corps was formed. Below is a photo of the first 20 Navy nurses to ever serve the United States.

Photo # NH 52960 "The Sacred Twenty"

Next, Uniforms Around the World

http://scrubsmag.com/historic-nursing-uniforms-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/4/

As we can see on the left, the British nursing uniforms of the early 1900s were very, very similar to the ones seen in America at the time.

If we take a look around the world at this time, almost all nursing uniforms were the same: the long gown to protect from infection, the apron for the same reason, and some type of hat or armband to identify oneself as a nurse.

Finnish nurses in 1918 (below) had a similar uniform, but favored the more nun-like, long head covering.

I thought this article was interesting.