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terms of the highest praise, and throughout the whole period during which the Committee have superintended it, no single circumstance has come to their knowledge calculated to make them speak of it otherwise than in terms of approval.
The nursing of the women's wards continues to be done by paupers under the superintendence of paid officers. The superintendence of these officers is of necessity very imperfect, as not only has each charge of from 150 to 200 patients, but these patients are located in several rooms, each ward containing about twenty patients. The only portion of the nursing, properly so called, which these officers undertake, is the administration of stimulants and in some exceptional cases of medicine. The bulk of it, as the giving of medicine, the dressing of wounds, the distribution of food, is left to be done by paupers. So much has from time to time been said of the untrustworthiness of pauper nurses, of the evils resulting to those patients who are placed exclusively under them, of the mischievous consequences upon the discipline of the Workhouse of a large number of petty offices being filled by able-bodied women, that your Committee believe they rightly interpret the feeling of the Select Vestry, as they undoubtedly do that of the general public, in supposing that the actual nursing of the sick in the Liverpool Workhouse can no longer be left in the hands of pauper nurses.
Starting from this point, your Committee considered that they had principally to inquire what sort of nursing can be most advantageously substituted for that of nursing by paupers. Two courses only appeared to be open to them—either to increase the number of paid officers, giving to each such a number of patients as she could reasonably be expected to look after, and treating each as an independent officer; or to extend over the whole hospital the system now in existence in the men's wards. Your Committee were much aided in forming a judgment upon this point, by what has taken place during the last few months in the fever hospital.
Here, originally, the paid attendants were in precisely the same position, with precisely similar duties as the paid officers in the women's hospital; but the number of patients rapidly diminishing, and no corresponding reduction taking
