Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/518

 WOMAN'S WORK 494 The following questions also will be asked : To what religious denomination do you belong ? What serious or infectious illnesses have you had ? (A medical certificate for general health is required.) Have you been re- vaccinated ? State in what hospitals or institutions you have been trained, and give dates of entering and leaving each. What certificates do you hold ? (Copies of all certificates to be sent with application.) How have you been occupied since training, and in what capacity have you been employed ? Do you know any foreign languages ? Names and addresses of two persons as references. State how long each has known you. Names and addresses of two guarantors who would undertake the refundment of passage - money should the agreement be broken. This has to be signed by the candidate, under a declaration that the information is correct. Pay The private nurses in the majority of cases are paid a salary of not less than /6o sterling per annum, board and lodging being provided by the local committee in each colony. For Government appointments the salaries vary from ;^35 to ;^i50, but where the salary is over ;^8o per annum the nurses have usually to provide their own board. In the case of private nurses the salary will be paid from the date of the nurse's arrival in the colony, and will cease on the date of her departure, but a second-class passage out and home will be paid. Conditions of Engas^ement It must be distinctly understood that nurses under engagement to the local com- mittee in a colony are bound by their rules and regulations, and are subject to the authority of the president of that committee. All nurses entering into the service of the association must distinctly understand that during the period of their agreement of service they must undertake whatever cases the local committee find it necessary to send them to. Each local committee is requested, where there is more than one nurse urder their control, to endeavour, as far as circum- stances will allow, to vary the duties for each nurse, but the discretion of the local committee as regards the cases to which each nuse is sent is not under any circumstances to be questioned by the nurse herself. The usual term of engagement is three years. The engagement may be ended at any time by three calendar months' notice given in wri ing to the nurse by th • president of the Leal com,-, ittee, or such other person as aforesaid or by the association, but the ending of the? engagement does not affect the right of the nurse to her homeward passage. The Colonial Nursing Association expects each nurse to wear uniform and washing-dresses when on duty. This rule is subject to modification by the local committee accord- ing to the climate in each colony. Each nurse engaged for private work must under- take to refund to the Colonial Nursing Association her outward passage-money, should she for reasons unapproved by the local committee break her engagement, or should the local committee find it necessary to terminate her engagement owing to serious misconduct on her part. She will be required, however, to find two persons who will guarantee such repayment. The nurses of the Colonial Nursing Association are forbidden to accept presents of any kind from patients. The nurses engaged for Government work sign their agreements with the Crown agents for the colonies, and are bound by similar regulations to the above. The limit of age for all new candidates for Government employment is 25 to 35. Advantagres of the Life To all women who have " wander-fever," and to whom the " call of the wild " comes, this life should prove interesting. The spirit of adventure needs to be rife in the colonial nurse. She should, like a soldier, be ready to be sent on duty anywhere, and at any time. Under these circumstances she will find her life full of variety, and can rely on meeting people who will see to it that she has a good time. Doctors, for instance, take good care that colonial nurses shall not suffer from homesickness and boredom, and they get up dances, dinners, and tennis parties, to which the nurses are invariably invited. Colonial life, moreover, as every- one knows, is very much more of a holiday than life over here. For one thing, there is a spirit of camaraderie and good-fellowship, owing to the fact, doubtless, that all are exiles in a foreign land, that is apt to be painfully conspicuous by its absence at home. Disadvantages Colonial nursing differs greatly from nursing in a general hospital in England. Of necessity the nurse's work brings her into contact with all sorts and conditions of men and women, also with various nationalities. There is much about her work which will inevitably disgust and nauseate her, more so than work in an English hospital. She may meet with all sorts of unpleasantness, and she must make up her mind that many things are " all in the day's work." If she is thin-skinned, squeamish, or apt to imagine herself ill-used, she is bound to have many a bad quarter of an hour. She needs to be unfailingly tactful and judicious, also un- failingly self-respecting, in which case she need never fear that she will lose the respect of her patients. A flighty, empty-headed girl is, as a rule, a dead failure in colonial nursing. The kind of woman who is needed is the woman who is not too stiff and stilted, but who, on the other hand, never courts undue familiarity from her patients.