ng a
poor hypodermic injection or a careless bed-bath. Accuracy in doing the
essential things should be so automatic that it takes not a whit more
time than inaccurate doing; and such accuracy is chiefly dependent on
constant self-correction when the task is still new, and on never
letting up in practice until the details of the doing become practically
automatic.

TRAINING THE WILL

There is no better opportunity for will-training than the hospital
affords the nurse. The constant necessity of acting against desire, of
doing tasks which in themselves cannot be agreeable, calls for a
developed will, while it gives it constant exercise. Moods of
discouragement and depression cannot be indulged. The nurse must do her
work no matter how tired or blue or "frazzled" she feels, if she is not
too sick to be on duty; for all time lost, she knows, is to be made up
to the hospital before training is completed.

Can this _will to do_, despite strong desire to the contrary, this mood
control and the ability to disregard physical discomfort, be acquired;
and if so, how?

It is a law of the mind and of the body that any task becomes easier by
repetition. We found that automatic habit eases much of the strain of
action. What seemed repulsive service to the probationer on her first
day in the hospital, she forced herself to do because she wanted to be a
nurse. She may go on through her three years unreconciled to these
particular duties, yet holding herself to them because she likes other
features of her work, or because she must earn her living and this seems
the best avenue open to her, or because her will to become a nurse is
strong enough to make her act continually against desire. And finally,
for almost every nurse, the interest in the end to be attained
overshadows the unpleasant incidents in its way. The tasks are actually
easier by their constant repetition, and her feeling of repugnance
becomes only a mild dislike. She has strengthened her will by continuing
to act against desire. But there is a better way to the same goal.

The woman who has thought out the reasons for and against taking
training; who has considered it carefully as a profession, and has
chosen to put up with any obstacles in the way of becoming a graduate
nurse, can find a happy adjustment to the disagreeable incidents it
involves. Realizing that the paths of learning are seldom thoroughly
smooth, she can resolve to use their very roughness for firmer