y.

This attitude on the part of the nurse presupposes that her own
attention, while with her patient, is upon him and upon securing his
health, and not upon her tiredness, or boredom, or headache, or the
party tonight, or the man who has asked her to go to the theater with
him tomorrow. She, surely, must learn to direct her thoughts where
reason suggests, and to gain new interests through willed attention, or
as a nurse she is less than second rate. Nor can she get the best
results until she can turn with a single mind to the patient at hand as
the immediate problem to be solved. And probably neither nurse nor
doctor does any better service, except in saving life itself, than in
keeping the patient from thinking constantly of himself and his ills.
For it seems of little use to have made some people physically well, if
they are to carry through prolonged years the curse of constant
self-attention, self-centeredness, an ingrowing ego.

There are a few simple laws of the mind hinging upon attention which are
today being impressed upon teachers in every department, in
kindergarten, public school, college, and university. And they are as
necessary to the nurse as to the teacher. Three of them we have already
discussed:

1. Attention naturally follows interest.

2. Attention may be held by will where reason directs.

3. New interests grow out of willed attention.

A fourth we shall stress before considering the use the nurse can make
of them:

4. The thing to which our chief attention is given becomes the most
important thing.

Do not contradict this too quickly. Don't say that nursing gets your
chief consideration because it is, of necessity, your profession; but
that you love your music infinitely more, and look forward to that
through all your hours on duty. If this merely proves that music is
distracting your attention, you are doing your nursing as a means, and
not as an end; you give it probably all the attention necessary for good
work, but your real desire is music. Your chief attention is directed
toward that goal. Hence music is to you the most important thing. If
your will is sufficiently trained to keep you from consciously thinking
of it, still you are dreaming of it and working for it. You may make a
very good nurse, but you will never be as excellent a one as the woman
from whom nursing demands first and chief attention.

We sometimes speak of one woman as a born nurse, and say of another,
"She's a