I have got used to the theatre work too, and (after much labour) have learnt the names of all the instruments in common use, so that I can hand them as they are asked for; and sometimes I am trusted to put out what I think will be required for an operation, and when Sister looks them over she doesn't often find anything missing.
CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL, LONDON, _March 1892_.
Soon after I last wrote I was sent down to the Out-Patients' Department--quite a different kind of work, and I shouldn't like it for long, but it was interesting for a time.
The numbers vary a great deal. From fifty to a hundred children may be brought up in one day, and many of them require small dressings to be attended to. Then, on two afternoons in the week, the surgeons do small operations; and sometimes there are half-a-dozen children all recovering from anæsthetics at the same time, and all requiring to be carefully watched.
There is a dear old Sister in charge, and one afternoon a week we go out together to visit any special hip cases that are being treated in their own homes, after having been in-patients here. _Such_ slums we sometimes have to go to; and yet it is wonderful how nicely the poor mothers keep these children when they are just shown the right way. We have one jolly little chap, who has been for two months in an extension apparatus rigged up on a big perambulator, with the weight hanging over the handle. He has improved so much that they will soon wheel him up in his bed-carriage, and I think the doctor will then sign his release from the extension.
Some of the nurses had rather a joke the other day--a joke which had good results for the rest of us. There is a confectioner's shop near here which we largely patronise, and these girls who were on night duty were hungry as usual, and they went into this shop for tea and scones before going to bed. While they were there, our secretary superintendent came in; and afterwards Mrs. ---- (who is quite a friend of ours) told the nurses that, seeing them there, he asked her whether many nurses were customers of hers; and she, pretending not to know him, said, "Oh yes, sir; but we gets more nurses from the Children's Hospital than from any of the other hospitals round here. You see, they feeds them _that_ badly there!" I believe he went straight back to the hospital and made inquiries about our food, for not many days after we had bacon for breakfast; and now there is always _something_ besides the bread put on the table, and we find it a vast improvement.