Firmness Necessary
Tact and an abundance of patience are necessary in nursing children. There must be a genuine sympathy, but it should be directed toward the ultimate good of the patient rather than to the gratification of immediate transient desires. Hence judicious firmness will he necessary. A capacity for observation is necessary, also; for especially in the case of infants and young children no information will be given consciously by the patient regarding the nature of various troubles that may arise. That is, the patients cannot interpret and explain their feelings; therefore the nurse will need to observe signs of change or progress.
The movement of the hand to some part of the body, the character of the cry, the position of the body, the response to various influences (light, sound, food, etc.)—the nurse may use all for the purpose of obtaining the information she needs. The control of the voice is even more important than in nursing adults. The child is sensitive to the voice and will be influ¬enced by inflections and the slightest evidence of irritation or excitement. The strange nurse should take charge gradually, the mother or family nurse giving way little by little, so the child will not be thrust suddenly into a strange atmosphere and so the nurse may have the child’s confidence.
The various diseases and disorders of childhood are taken up in Section 7 of this volume and in Vol. VIII in regular alphabetical order with those of adults; hence they need not be specially considered here.