The selection of a nurse should receive careful consideration. She should be known to be honest, honorable, competent, healthy, and personally clean in habits and dress, and she should be tactful, obliging, and she should attend to her own affairs strictly. She should not be a gossip; she should not shirk her work or pry into family affairs that do not concern her; and she should not drag into the conversation her own personal or family secrets.
The nurse has certain rights which the patient should willingly recognize. She is entitled to a comfortable bed, sufficient sleep, good food, and exercise in the open air every day. These are essential in order that [72] she maintain her own health, as well as keep at the highest point of efficiency.
When you select your physician consult with him regarding your nurse. If you know personally a capable nurse, there is no objection to selecting her, and no physician will oppose this procedure if you assume the responsibility of her capability.
There are many advantages, however, in permitting the physician to provide a nurse. He assumes the responsibility of the nurse's capability, and it is safe to assume he will not recommend one whom he knows to be personally objectionable, or professionally incapable. Every physician acquires certain individual methods in the conduct of maternity cases, which experience has taught him to be successful. A competent knowledge of these methods by the nurse greatly facilitates the details and ensures a harmonious conduct of the entire case,--facts which accrue to the comfort and the well-being of the patient.
It is not out of place here to warn a young wife against being advised by a neighbor or a busybody, as to whom she should select as physician or nurse. You must not depend upon the gossip of the neighborhood. The physician or nurse whom you are told by one of these irresponsible individuals not to take, may be the one above all others whom you should take. When you hear a gossiping woman decry a physician, depend upon it, she owes him something,--most often it is a bill, but it may only be a grudge. There is no class of men in any community who are maligned and abused so much as are physicians. They seem to be the choice victims of the enmity and spite of every malicious feminine tongue. A woman should think twice before she utters a criticism regarding the work of a physician. She would, if she but knew how quickly she brands and advertises herself as irresponsible and lacking in ordinary courtesy and good breeding, as she is not qualified to criticise the professional capability of a physician, nor is she qualified to estimate the extent of the wrong she perpetrates. There is no class of men who do more conscientious work, day after day, than do physicians, [73] and there is no class of men who are more deserving of the commendation of the entire community than the thousands of self-sacrificing, underpaid members of the medical profession. Be suspicious therefore when you hear a criticism, and be very, very sure before you utter one,--rather give him the benefit of the doubt and you will do no wrong, and it may be at some future date you will be thankful you did not criticise.