The Nursing Life
Stg.—In her excellent article on the nurse's health Dr. Margaret Jackson did not deal very fully with the'nurse's recreation. I think it is true that, generally speaking, life in an institution has certain inherent disadvantages for which some correction should be sought. In the first place it is nar- rowing. Doctors and nurses talk shop, mix little with those in other occupations and, after a number of years, may only vaguely perceive that a place they entered perhaps as a refuge has become a prison. All too often one finds, notably among senior staffs, that the four walls bound their horizon. In their franker moments many will admit that they feel strange in a private house. Surrounded by morbid sights in the wards and living in a narrow community, they become thrown in upon them- selves. I have noted this during nine years spent in various hospitals.
In my opinion it is vitally necessary to encourage nurses to live out, to mix with other people who are not nursing and to maintain a variety of interests. I have sometimes been surprised to find pious and kindly persons giving much money and time to some distant work of benevo- lence overseas, while just round the corner is an institution full of young women who would give much to be asked out to tea, if only for an hour. More than once I have found one of these girls about to burst into tears. When I have taken them aside, they have sobbed out, " l'sc been in London five years and I have not been in anybody's house once.- I suggest that some of your readers, in and outside London. could di
something about it.—Yours faithfully, G. C. PETHER, M.D. 79 Crescent West, Hadley Wood.
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