- Transcription
<The following letter was sent to all private trained nurses in the State.>
STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA
GOVERNOR'S OFFICE
RALEIGH
Feb. 13, 1920.
My dear Nurse:
Influenza and its attendant, pneumonia, which last fall and winter killed nearly fifteen thousand North Carolinians, is again abroad in the State.
In many communities medical and nursing service is adequate to meet the needs of the emergency thus produced. In some communities medical and nursing service is wholly lacking. There are sections where entire families in a neighborhood are stricken down and lie sick unto death without even those ordinary attentions for their comfort and welfare that kindly neighbors might administer.
Along with these perilous community needs there must be hundreds of trained nurses in the State now engaged in attending private cases. Between the convenience and safety of individual families and the peril of stricken communities the sense of duty of private nurses must be very uncertain and most disturbing to their peace of mind. Many nurses with private cases, under existing circumstances, perhaps would gladly leave to their State the responsibility of determining their place of duty.
I am, therefore, in the public interest and with the difficult position of the private nurse in mind, writing to make this request of you: that if you are now engaged in private nursing, you fill out and mail to me the enclosed form, which, as you will observe, leaves the determination of your place of service in the present emergency not to yourself, but to the State, and relieves you of all responsibility. The probabilities are that not more than fifty nurses from among all of the nurses engaged in the State will be called, - a relatively small percentage of the total nurses at work.
In this emergency, when our people cry out for help, no private duty should stand in the way. This is no time for any individual or family to retain a nurse for private duty when her services can be so much more valuable; nor is it the time for any nurse to remain on such private duty when she can possibly be spared. If there is any question in the mind of a nurse as to which is the more important, her duty to her private patient or her duty to the whole people, I urge her to present the case to me and absolve herself of the responsibility of deciding.
Very truly yours,
