Nursing From the Past

Here is a little something to show you all how far nursing and the nurse's role has come. My Aunt Bonnie took her CA State Nursing Boards on Aug 23-24, 1966. She was a graduate of Mt San Antonio College. This is an excerpt from her nursing book.

Serious Reader Note:
Nursing is a very demanding profession. To start with, nurses must learn everything a doctor learns, so that whenever a situation arises that might develop into a mistake on the part of the doctor if the nurse did what the doctor ordered instead of what he meant to do, the nurse can distinguish the latter from the former and prevent the mistake from occuring. Then nurses must learn how to use this knowledge so that neither the doctor nor the patient is aware they possess it, for in the former instance, it might cause the patient to lose confidence in the doctor, and in the latter, it might cause the doctor to lose confidence in himself. Finally, if, despite a nurse's best efforts, things are not going well between doctor and patient, and the nurse can't patch it up, the nurse must take the blame.
Nurses are very patient. They realize their reward will not be in this lifetime, for to receive even a fraction of the recognition they deserve would be to lessen the importance of the doctor. Nurses often believe in reincarnation.

So there you have it, the 1960's view of nursing. Boy have we come a long way from that thinking!