Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/204

188 1 88 A Short History of Nursing housekeeping to housekeepers, dispensing to phar- macists, and so on. Nurses still retained super- vision over some of these things, and sometimes prepared themselves as dietitians, pharmacists, or housekeepers. The modern trend toward specialization now shows a large variety of more or less distinct posi- tions. These are administrative, edu- Workof nurses in cational, or technical in character, most modern Qf them a combination of the three, hospitals First, there are many graduate nurses engaged in regular ward work. Next, hospital management is especially prominent. Thus in New York state, as an example, about fifty per cent, of all hospitals are managed by nurses. Such work requires good business knowledge and executive ability. In many instances the direction of the training school for student nurses is also included in the duties of the hospital superintendent. The administration of training schools con- stitutes in itself an educational problem of im- Administra- P^rtance. There are, in the United tion of train- States, over sixteen hundred registered ing schools training schools attached to hospitals, with a yearly average of between forty and fifty thousand students. The heads or principals of these schools direct all the educational work of these