What is a Student Nurse?

Carol Ann, a friend of mine from nursing school, recently came to visit. She and her husband live in California. They cruised the Panama Canal over Christmas, drove to see friends in Clearwater, Florida, toured both Savannah and Charleston and traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina to stay with us for a few days. Immediately, we began to reminisce about our school years. I pulled out the Lumine 1962 yearbook so we could scan our younger selves when we lived in the nursing residence with 42 other young women. For three years, the Gray Nuns of Montreal instilled in us the essence of nursing along with the skills and art of the profession.

Of course, much has changed since then (I will write more about this in later posts). At the time, we nursing students staffed the hospital on the evening and night shifts where a senior student nurse filled the charge position and second year students worked under her. None of us were paid for this “experience.”

The following essay printed in our yearbook describes the student nurse—all young women. I don’t know the author, Barbara Garrity, nor do I agree that student nurses wore white before they graduated.

Many of you older nurses will recognize the out-dated attitudes of the time and most of you youngsters may be scratching your heads wondering could a student nurse be a real person.

What do you think?

WHAT IS A STUDENT NURSE?

By Barbara Garrity

Student nurses are found everywhere, underneath, on top of, or slithering past patients’ beds. Doctors yell at them, head nurses criticize them, residents overlook them, mothers worry about them, and patients love them.

A student nurse is courage under a cap, a smile in snowy white, strength in starched skirts, energy that is endless, the best of young womanhood, a modern Florence Nightingale. Just when she is gaining poise and prestige, she drops a glass, breaks a syringe or steps on a doctor’s foot.

A student nurse is a composite. She eats like a team of hungry interns and works like the whole nursing staff put together. She has the speed of a gazelle, the strength of an ox, the quickness of a cat, the endurance of a flagpole sitter, the abilities of Florence Nightingale, Linda Richards, and Clara Barton all rolled into one white uniform.

To the head nurse, she has the stability of mush, the fleetness of a snail, the mentality of a mule and is held together by starch, adhesive tape and strained nerves. To an alumna, she will never work as hard, carry more trays, make more beds, or scrub on more cases than her predecessors.

A student nurse likes days off, boys her own age, the O.R., affiliations, certain doctors, pretty clothes, her roommate, Mom and Dad. She’s not much on working 3-11, days off with class, alarm clocks, getting up for roll call, or eating corn beef every Tuesday.

No one else looks forward so much to a day off or so little with working 3-11. No one else gets so much pleasure from straightening a wrinkled sheet or wetting a pair of parched lips. No one else can cram into one little head the course of a disease, the bones comprising the pelvis, what to do when a patient is in shock, how to insert a Cantor tube (usually at 3 A.M.) plus the ten top tunes of the hit parade.

A student nurse is a wonderful creature; you can criticize her, but you can’t discourage her. You can hurt her feelings, but you can’t make her quit. Might as well admit it, whether you are a head nurse, doctor, alumna, or patient, she is your personal representative of the hospital, your living symbol of faith and sympathetic care.