s ordered, and that, so far as possible,
the ventilators are operated to insure that.

If your attention has followed all these details with careful, accurate
perception; if you have grasped them clearly, one by one, at the time,
you will be able to answer quickly next day when some one asks how many
patients the wards accommodate, and how many beds are vacant. You can
describe the lighting and ventilation, the room temperature, etc. And
later on you will quickly see to it that a screen is properly placed
when you know treatments are to be given.

ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS

After the first few years of life practically nothing enters
consciousness that cannot by some likeness or contrast or kinship be
connected with something already there. Were it not for this saving
economy memory would be helpless. So the nurse who is in earnest and
eager to master her new work will not only perceive carefully each
detail of arrangement, but in two or three days at most will know each
patient there; she will have worked out a system of associations,
remembering not a meaningless name, but an individual with certain
characteristics which she ties up with her name, and so gives it a
definite personality. She thereafter recalls not merely a patient, but a
very special patient; and as she comes to mind she brings a title with
her, which is her symbol. Likewise when her name is spoken or thought,
she herself comes into the nurse's immediate consciousness. A bed in a
certain part of the room will be no longer merely a bed, but
Mrs. Brown's bed. Remembering can be made easy by using some such method
as this:

The first bed to the right as you enter is Mrs. Meade's. She is the
woman with the broken hip. The next is Mrs. Blake's, that blonde, big
woman who wants more attention than any one else. The third is
Mrs. Bunting's. She has wonderful, curling black hair, and a nice
response to everything done for her. The next beyond is Mrs. O'Neil's.
She looks as Irish as her name sounds, and you will remember her by
that. So each bed comes to mean a certain patient, and each patient
comes to suggest the ones on either side of her--her neighbors.
Blondeness and bigness together call Mrs. Blake to mind. Broken hip
means Mrs. Meade, etc. Each individual on that side of the ward becomes
associated with a name which stands for definite characteristics.

Then you begin at the left bed nearest the door and follow the occupants
back on that side. You may