Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 241, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1918 — WHAT CAN WE DO? [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHAT CAN WE DO?

The Central Division Bulletin of the American Red Cross, in a recent issue, has a stirring call for trained nurses to enroll for service. A great many nurses are needed both for foreign and home service. The constant fighting on many fronts, the increasing number of wounded returning to America, and the greatly expanded army and navy foake the need for nurses imperative. The following are extracts from this Bulletin: The nursing service must hold two great lines. The first line is the care of the wounded men in our hospitals over there. The second line is the care of our soldiers in training, in the cantonment hospitals over here. Enroll now!'Help hold those lines. The secretary of war has just issued a regulation placing members of the Army Nurse Corps above all non-com-missioned officers. Congress has recently enacted a law increasing, the salary of members of the Army, Nurse Corps to $60.00 a month over here, and S7O a month over there, with maintenance and traveling expenses. Enroll! Our boys overseas must not be allowed to suffer one single moment for the lack of women’s skilled and tender care. Enroll! If you are vitally needed to maintain local nursing activities yoti will be allowed, with the consent oi the military authorities, to stay where you are because you are doing a patriotic service. Nevertheless —Enroll! Your training, your experience, your woman’s tenderness and devotion—there can be no greater, no nobler gift to your country in this supreme hour. Next to enlisting himself, the physician’s most patriotic duty is to encourage trained nurses to enroll for war service. The Red Cross understands perfectly the sacrifice this will entail upon physicians and the public, but as between such sacrifice on their part and a sacrifice of our enlisted men, the Red Cross knows that American professional men and citizens will not hesitate one moment in a choice. It means that in the home, in the laboratory, and In the hospital, these expert nurses must be used the fewest possible number of days or hours per case so that they may be released to the government.

Where the physician In peace times assigns a trained nurse for two weeks to an emergency case, for instance, he must henceforth allow only three days on an average and then substitute a practical nurse or a junior trained nurse. All along the line in his practice, the physician will have to curtail the employment of trained nurses to the acute periods of cases of all kinds. When it is stated that perhaps 70 per cent of the registered nurses’ln America are in private employment—that is, are not in institutions —it will be seen that the education of the public to reduce its calls upon trained nurses is a principal part of the Red Cross task. The public accepts the recommendation of physicians as to the length of time a trained nurse should be employed. A solemn responsibility rests upon physicians to make this, employment as rare as is consistent with safety. Il is one of the sacrifices of war. It is earnestly hoped that physicians will encourage a 100 per cent enrollment of nurses.