THE VISITING NURSE DEPARTMENT

Abstract

A PHASE of visiting nursing that to our settlement mind is not sufficiently emphasized in the training of the pupil nurses during their period of education is that relating to their great privilege to perform a large as well as a most modern service. 'hey have unequalled opportunity, in certain conditions of the life and social surroundings of their patients in congested quarters, to help the strugglers on a foreign soil to understand the requirements of Anglo-Saxon law and order and to bring to them a conception of American ideals that will go toward creating among the immigrants a realization of what is good in American life. No district nurse who lias intelligent perceptions and education lias failed to recognize the potentialities for good in the simple stranger or has not felt it incumbent upon herself to translate into elementary terms the laws that affect the welfare of these patients of hers. On the other hand, it has seemed a golden opportunity lost when the nurse througli failure of education on her part has been unable to point out the laws that touch the people in their daily lives and to explain the reasons for their enactment and the standard of the civilization the immigrant must face. What greater value can an intelligent nurse have who, going into the homes of the poor and having some knowledge of these laws, can explain them to the family with whom she comes in contact? She, as an educator,-for that we have long since called the district nurse,--must be also a believer in the enforcement of law, and if at times the laws seem to her unwise and to bring undue hardship in their enforcement, she can do no better service to society than to express lier opinion to those people in her community who are more familiar with the law and who through her contribution as to its working may have further light upon its reasonableness.