out the doctor's orders; that you are capable of something more
than the ability to take temperature, pulse, and respiration.

We must remember that even yet we are, in a way, pioneers of one
part of that great woman movement in the world. It is not enough
to educate one family up to the realization that we are its
equals; the next house we go to, the same work may have to be done
over again; but each time it is done, and done well, the whole
profession has been benefited, which is an aim worth striving for.




VIII

THE NURSE AS A TEACHER


It does not occur to every nurse, when she graduates, that she has
been preparing herself, during all these strenuous years of study
and hospital work, for the life of a teacher. She fondly imagines
that she is a nurse, and only that; but after she has been doing
private duty for a year or more, she realizes that she is
generally a teacher as well as a nurse, and that often she is a
missionary also.

Perhaps no private duty nurse needs to be told what subject she
must teach; the patient or the patient's friends never let her
rest until she has told the "why" of every thing she does, or does
not. There are, however, some important subjects that the nurse-