When you meet other nurses in your work, as you are sure to do,
and when you compare your school with the one the other nurse came
from, try to realize that the other school is neither wholly above
nor wholly below your own; each has probably its own merits and
its own drawbacks. You should not tell the other nurse any of your
own school's shortcomings, any sooner than you would tell them to
any other stranger; be loyal everywhere to the place where you
were fitted for your work.

Never tell revolting hospital stories to your patients. Some
people have the most morbid wish to hear dreadful details. I
remember a patient of mine, years ago, asking me in all good faith
to tell her the most horrible thing I had ever seen in all my
hospital experience. I asked her why she wished to hear such
things, and after some reflection she acknowledged that it was a
foolish, morbid curiosity. It is best to keep the dreadful side
entirely out of sight; there are plenty of bright, interesting,
pleasant things always occurring; tell of these. Tell of the
cunning little babies in the lying-in ward, the absurd little
black ones, the fat little German and Swede babies. Tell of the
surly drunken men that come, and how a week of cleanliness in bed,
with a broken leg, or it may be a cracked skull, will change them
into quiet, polite, pleasant patients; and how, later, they will
take their turn at washing dishes, with a docility that would make
their wives stupid with amazement. All such matters (and the more
you try to think of them, the more you will be able to recall)
will amuse and really edify your patient, many of whom think of a
hospital only as a place of terror.