Applied Psychology for Nurses

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Excerpt: ...directs the mind to displace them by others. The nurse meets in her patients numberless habits which retard recovery of body and make for an unwholesome mental attitude. Some patients have the complaint habit, some the irritation habit, some the self-protection habit, some the habit of impatience, some of reckless expression of despair, some of loss of control, some of incessant self-attention. The nurse who can arouse an incentive to habits of cheer expression when the least cause of cheer appears, who can by reason, or if that is not possible, by suggestion, by holding out incentives, or by making some privilege depend upon control-this nurse can help her patient to displace habits of an illness-accepting mind by habits of a health-accepting one. Above all, let her beware of opening the way to habits of invalidism. Some people acquire the "hospital habit" because it is easier to give way to ill-feeling, however slight, and to be cared for with comfort, than to encourage themselves to build up endurance by giving little attention to minor ailments. The Saving Power of Will It is not uncommon to hear a doctor say, "Nothing but his will pulled him through that time." It does not mean quite what it says, for the patient’, s will would have been helpless to cure him without the medicine and the treatment. But it does mean that in some cases when life is hovering on the brink, even the most skilful treatment cannot hold it back if the will to live is gone. The chances may be half and half. Lack of desire to live may drop the balance on the death side. Determination and hope and confidence may overweigh the life side. For the influence of will in refusing to surrender to depression may throw the needed hair’, s weight in favor of more normal circulation. Depression and emotion may so effect the sympathetic nervous system as to cause a lowered circulatory activity. Determination, based on volition, may stimulate a...