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Fiftyish and RefreshedAuthor(s): Matilda DavisSource: The American Journal of Nursing, Vol. 43, No. 5 (May, 1943), pp. 434-435Published by: Lippincott Williams & WilkinsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3415900 .

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Fiftyish and Refreshed By MATILDA DAVIS, R.N.

Oakland, California

AFTER SOME TWENTY YEARS as homemaker

and mother, I return to nursing. During these two decades I had been active in church work in addition to raising two sons and keeping my husband happy.

In 1941 I decided to withdraw to the side- lines, retire into my home and garden, and set my own pace in taking life easy. I had entered my fifties and I thought I ought to retire grace- fully, let younger hands carry on. I would enjoy life's sunset like the soft beauty of a diminishing finale.

All these homemaking years I had kept up my state nurses' registration. I felt that it was something I could fall back on should the need to earn my own living again ever arise.

But now, for me, nursing was out. I was going to sit still and watch the world go by. I was unaware that church work, or nursing, or motherhood, or perhaps a combination of all three, had made me "others" conscious. To sit still and try to enjoy the sun paint each day's memories in gold on the western horizon was not easy even in California, because I could not erase the knowledge that that same sun was rising on hunger, misery, and death, and that these were my fellow humans- people of my own day and age. I became im- patient. I must fit in somewhere. I was a cell in this great body; to be a healthy one I must be active.

The Red Cross was calling for nurses. Could I go back? I debated with myself, negative and positive. Yes, I could make beds, rub backs, smooth pillows, but in the intervening years since I nursed last, there have been new tech- nics, new equipment, and new drugs. Ignorant of these, and with greying hair, and matronly figure against a background of trim well-poised young professionals, I would feel clumsy to say the least. No, I could not go back, I argued.

Then came the answer, refresher course in

our county hospital. Here was an opportunity to try a comeback, and to ascertain whether one could give service value or not. Timidly I applied, doubtingly I signed up, and found

myself one of a group of fifteen whose average age was around forty-five. We were called the "noisy" refreshers because, though strangers up till then, we seemed to be bursting with things to say to one another. The decades were merely a dream. We were "probs" again, mak- ing those immaculate-corner beds.

Actually, the patients seemed the same ones I had left there twenty years ago--same pains, same behavior, same smells.

Timidity was my bugbear. My first hypo was in the "outer lower quarter" of a little chocolate-colored boy who was to go to surgery. I had given him a toy just before to play with. He trusted me. The prick of the needle made him squirm. How could I betray him so! "Sorry," and then I engaged his attention with his toy. He soon forgot my unkindness, and was drowsy before he reached the surgery.

I was back! Professional airs and all! I gave thiamin intramuscularly to a poorly nourished woman who was brought in with ruptured varicose veins. I learned the technic of apply- ing hot compresses over incision areas post- operatively. I became a somewhat efficient user of the stethoscope, and sphygmomanometer which in my day were doctor monopolies. I had assisted with intravenous infusions, and

given hypodermoclyses, but here was some- thing new to me! In the ward a patient lay with a catheter in her nostril and, via her forehead and fastened with adhesive, it became

entangled with tubes and bottles attached to a stand. This has become associated in my mind with a monument of reverence to Drs. Wang- ensteen and Cornell. While I was busy with housework they were easing human suffering. With a knowledge of physics and a concentrated mind its apparent complication vanished.

Drugs and solutions are the most hazardous field for refreshers. Most drugs in our hospital now are marked in the metric system only. They were marked in both in my training day. Some of the common drugs now bear a differ- ent name, viz., aspirin, now acetysalicylic acid. We have become more or less acquainted with

434 VoL. 43, No. 5

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Nursing Service in a Small Plant

Nursing Service in a Small Plant By HAZEL H. LEEDKE, R.N.

Industrial Nurse, Thilmany Pulp and Paper Company, Kaukauna, Wisconsin

THIS ARTICLE has been planned for the benefit of the new nurse beginning an industrial nursing service in a small plant without the services of a medical director, but with such services ar- ranged on a part-time or on-call basis. The sug- gested procedure is the result of more than thirteen years experience and observation in industrial nursing in plants of similar ar- rangements. The points herein covered seem fundamental, but can be modified to fit indi- vidual situations.

ORGANIZATIONAL PROCEDURE

Administration.-To organize and establish a first aid department with its many related activities, it seems logical to first ascertain to

whom the nurse is going to be responsible. It may be to the top management, to the indus- trial relations or personnel departments. In the writer's opinion, top management or the plant manager is highly desirable, since all the nurse's programs must have the support of management to be completely successful. This holds true in safety programs as well as in health work. It simplifies the nurse's work, in that she has direct approach to management. She needs to remember that management as well as em- ployees must be sold on health in most instan- ces. What seem ordinary fundamental health principles, may be obscure and revolutionary to both management and personnel.

Whatever the arrangement may be, there

MAY I943

435 the sulfa drugs through magazines, but I found many others the names of which were new to me. However, if I had kept up my subscription to my Journal as well as my state registration they probably would not have been so new. Of course, we had an instructor working with us and we did everything for the first time under her supervision.

"Burning feet" was the refreshers' chief ob- stacle. Mine reached exhaustion point. I had a chiropodist make a leather arch support for me. He also came with me to a special shoe store where shoes of a particular last are retailed, and assisted in a fitting. On his advice I massage my soles each night with vaseline. It seems to work. Before putting on my shoes I dust them inside with a good grade of talcum with which I have mixed a teaspoon each of boric powder and baking soda. However I find general health is an important factor, especially elimination.

Heretofore, I regarded our county hospital- called Highland-as a beautiful building sur- rounded with artistically laid out gardens. It was a place to care for indigents and emergen-

cies. I have come to know it from the inside, and have a deeper appreciation now for all it means to my city and county. I admire the unassuming way this model hospital is conducted.

When I hear the airplanes drone overhead day after day, as they do here, I form a mental picture of those fine young sons of America at the controls; looking ahead-clear of eye, firm of hand, and mentally alert, ready to risk all in order that the ideals for which America stands may survive and be perpetrated. I have the satisfactory feeling of sharing the burden of our world's conflict, knowing that I am relieving one more nurse for the service, and that I am contributing to the comfort of those who must stay at home.

We are all parts of a great whole, America. We must fit in, we must be healthy cells in the body of America. I am part of the patients to whom I minister, I am part of my city's and county's contribution to war effort, I am part of those sons of America flying overhead, I am part of America.

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