Bringing My History To Duke: Part Three

The things I learned from HILDA TAYLOR were precious.  The things I learned from other nurses were important too, but quite from the opposite side of the coin.  Lazy is a word that I seldom use, but this nurse was LAZY.
Anytime there was an opportunity to sit at the desk, she took it.  She came to work with dirty shoes ( a real sin in HILDA'S book), unkempt hair, and teeth needing repair.  Get the picture?   The one thing I remember most was dangerous.  Just a few months into being a nursing assistant, I learned to prepare narcotics for injection.  I did not learn how to inject, but it was so close.

The process in 1950 is shocking by today's standards.  It went this way.

Large Metal Spoon

• Go to the utility room and get a large metal spoon.
• Take the spoon to the nursing office.
• The secretary would open a case, the size of a cigarette package.
• The secretary would remove the small pill of Demerol, dilaudid, morphine, or codeine and drop it into the spoon.
• I would carefully cover the spoon with my hand, and walk back to the utility room.
• I would lay the pill aside.
• Fill the spoon with saline or distilled water and bring it to a boil on the gas burner.
• I would take the glass syringe, place the pill in the barrel, and suck up the boiling water into the syringe.
• The pill dissolved. Then I shook it carefully to disperse the medication.



Metal needles that were reused after
processing in Central Supply.

• Then, I took a needle from a container, attach it to the glass syringe, lay the needle on a sterile 2x2 sponge, after running it across it to see if there was a barb to hurt the patient.
• It was then time to take it to Miss LAZY for administration.

If you took time to painfully read through the process above, and are not a nurse, YOU can really see what is wrong.  If you are a nurse you are shaking with laughter or disgust. or both.  This is just one way I learned.  Discerning between right and wrong is a challenge in every profession. For those of us who came along at this time in history, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS and everything that goes along with it, is not acceptable.   I was scared not to do as she asked and yet feeling so "big" because she was trusting me.  This was an early one of those challenges.

DUKE taught me how to stand on my own and do what the right thing might be.  It became a part of me as the years passed.  As I passed through the four years, there were many instances to choose the quick, the expedient, the easy way.  There was the feeling of achievement when the right thing was done.  This was just one of the things that make me proud of DUKE and my education.