PRELIMINARY TRAINING IN THE LONDON HOSPITAL

Abstract

IN these days, when so much is written about hospital nurses, and so many are seen in our midst, it may interest some of our readers to learn of a comparatively new departure which has taken place in the well-known London Hospital Training-School. It was observed that the first plunge of the new probationer into hospital life was a somewhat overwhelming experience. The nzost courageous novice could scarcely help feeling bewildered when she found herself arrayed in unfamiliar uniform, and realized that she was an insignificant unit among the two hundred and fifty or three hundred nurses with whom she had chosen to begin her nursing career. In a hospital containing about eight hundred beds the work of the day is necessarily the first consideration, and the well-meaning stranger found herself comparatively useless until a few weeks had accustomed her to the routine, and she had made one or two friends among her fellow-workers. Moreover, it was by no means easy to ascertain in such conditions how far the candidate was fitted to become a nurse, or for those under whom she served to arrive at an accurate conclusion on this important point during the trial month which probationers undergo before being definitely accepted for training. Slowness, for instance, might be due to mere ignorance of the unaccustomed life and surroundingsn in which case the defect would soon be remedied, or it might be due to innate want of capacity on the part of the probationer, and then all efforts to instil a knowledge of nursing would be a waste of timen and would fail to make her a really good nurse The committee of the London Eospital, thereforen decided to take a house (Tredegar lIouse, 99 Bow Road, E.) and to furnish it for the purpose of receiving twenty-eight selected candidates, free of charge, for periods of seven weeks, previous to transferring to the hospital those 270