Practical Nursing - 1914 Author:Anna Caroline Maxwell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: they are sometimes unintentionally unjust; but school nurses should remember that they are not sufficiently experienced to pass judgment upon the officers' motiv... more »es and actions. There is probably not a graduate nurse of any intelligence who, on looking back after experience has broadened her views, has not felt both mortified and amused at some of the egotistical judgments of her days in training. Obligations To Patients.—Many of the obligations that a nurse owes her patients have been already discussed under the head of qualifications. There is, however, a point of honor on which too great stress -cannot be laid; and that is the importance of keeping inviolable the secrets of patients and tdr families. When people are ill and in trouble they are apt to talk of things which in their calmer moments they would not mention, and it is exceedingly dishonorable to repeat anything learned under such conditions. In fact, the safest and most honorable course is never to discuss patients in any way. Many a nurse has had cause bitterly to regret a few careless words dropped about a patient under her care, or being unwittingly drawn into a discussion of former patients and their ailments. If nurses would follow more closely the principles of the pledge which in many hospitals they ae required to take at graduation, they would be less likely to commit the indiscretions for which they are often justly blamed. That all may recome familiar with the precepts of the pledge, it is given below. The Florence Nightingale Pledge.—"I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly to pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully. I will abstain fromwhatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. I will d...« less