Egyptian Fun in The Nursing Dorm

 Hospital diploma nursing schools mandated that all students reside in the dorm which was conveniently located within the hospital complex. Individuality was nipped in the bud with all student nurses sharing the misery while at the same time maintaining a pseudo happy face. A monastic-like existence was thought to enhance the nursing educational training experience. Older nurses viewed nursing as a cult and eschewed an outside life for the good of nursing.

These dorms were not fun places and novice nurses slept, woke, ate, slaved for 8 hours on the wards, ate again and studied under the watchful eyes of house mothers before sleeping again. As the bewitching hour of 9 PM rolled around it was time for some fun. House mothers, affectionately known as house hags, completed their last rounds before mandatory lights out at 10PM. The end result was one hour of time for which there was no accounting. Between 9 and 10PM was the bewitching hour.

Student nurses had to make their own fun in this  stark environment that was devoid of  televisions or any form of recreation that cost real money. Of course the sewing room was open, but who felt like mending aprons or fussing with uniforms after working or studying all day. Novice nurses were pretty much left to their own devices when it came to recreational pursuits.

Water fights were popular diversions with an enema can rigged above transoms to dump a deluge on anyone answering a knock on the door. The downside to water sports was the clean up and the screaming frequently attracted uninvited attention from nosy house mothers.

Water fights were fun, but messy

Human pyramid building was the activity of choice in many diploma nursing school dorms. The base of the structure was formed by 4 girls kneeling on the hall floor and gradually built up until the tiniest girl was perched at the apex. Pyramids were fun because there was an immediate sense of accomplishment. This was something novice student nurses could do on their own without being harangued by overbearing instructors or busy body housemothers.

Pyramid diagrams were often used in nursing school to explain the nursing hierarchy or illustrate the priority of patient needs. There was an inherent sense of satisfaction in having fun with something that was not fun.  Human pyramids in the hall were good, clean fun.

 I looked forward to our pre-clinical cafeteria breakfast at 6:30 AM where the first topic  of discussion was frequently the last night's  pyramid building adventures. Early one morning there was an unusual buzz in the air and the discussion was preceded by a "you are not going to believe this disclaimer." The girls had constructed an inverse human pyramid with the most petite girls at the base and "Big Betty" who tipped the scales at about 100kgs as the top. I wondered why so many of the more diminutive students were hobbling about!

Nursing School Probies Had a Rough Initiation

Right this way to the swimming pool!

First year hospital   diploma nursing students were affectionately referred to as "probies" which was short hand for probationer. Probies had a rough life and were at the mercy of junior and senior nursing students for their first 6 weeks. Some of the more benign pranks inflicted on the  hapless probies were scavenger hunts to central supply for things like fallopian tubes or enema nozzles and  getting doused with water blasted from an asepto syringe.

Some of the initiation shenanigans were a bit shocking and proved to me that estrogen could be just as potent as testosterone when it came to fueling hijinks aimed at demeaning innocent victims. Groups of hospital hardened young women possessed a mystical herd strength fueled by their clinical nursing experiences and were eager to share the misery with novices. Somehow, the girls who were the most faint-hearted became the most aggressive tormentors.

 Nursing was emotionally and physically challenging and the initiation was designed to weed out the more faint of heart. Steel plating was a prerequisite for the rigors of vintage hospital nursing.

Many hospital nursing schools in Chicago  had beautiful indoor swimming pools. Cook County Hospital had one of the fanciest which  resembled a Roman bath complete with marble columns. What a contrast to the stark Nightengale wards packed to the gills with suffering, impoverished patients. Luxury in the midst of poverty always rankled my hackles.

Unbeknownst to probies, our hospital lacked a swimming pool but did have an old fashioned exterior  fire escape tube connected to the second floor freshman dormitory on one end and the great outdoors on the other. In the event of a fire, the fleeing victims opened the double doors to the tube and flung themselves into the awaiting platform that quickly transitioned into a steep descent. Gravity did the rest as the victim flew through the tortuous tube at breakneck velocity landing, hopefully, safely on the outside.

Junior and senior students knew how to grease the skids, so to speak, by applying pilfered bone wax to the inclined tube's interior with ABD dressing pads. This made the descent even more terrifying, especially to the unexpecting probies.

The probie trap was baited by covering the EMERGENCY FIRE EXIT sign on the escape tube's entrance with an ordinary sheet and substituting it with a sign clearly stating: SWIMMING POOL OPEN. The deception was further enhanced by soaking a washcloth with Clorox and tossing it just inside the opening to the tortuous tube. The tortuous tube even smelled like a swimming pool.

"O.K. probbies it's time for a group swim," was the battle cry as the doors to the cleverly disguised fire escape were gleefully swung open. As the probies made their sudden descent a satisfying ( at least to the juniors and senior students,) cacophony of shrieks and screams emerged from the tortuous tubes. Any probbie further back in the line up was advised the screams were in good fun and initiatd by the cold water in the pool.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all. I can identify with that Christmas tree shown above because although I'm worn out and a bit scraggly, I'm still vertical. I spent a good number of holidays working in the hospital and like my colleagues above always found something to be joyful about even in the most dire of circumstances. There is always a silver lining, especially at Christmas.

Before my brain freeze set in, I came up with this a few years back. My readership was no where near what it is now, so if you need a chuckle, here's the link:    https://oldfoolrn.blogspot.com/search?q=twas+the+night

Nursing Diploma Schools Were Providers With a Price

Diploma schools provided "free" textbooks

It was the crack of dawn on the very first day of a new class and we were seated at our hard wooden chair/desk hybrids. Those  old hardwood seating devices had a writing surface that resembled a bent canoe paddle that followed a serpentine course until it was right in front of you. This clever design averted a hasty exit because you had to swing out laterally before standing up. Scanty student seats like this were scorned by those unfortunate enough to be left-handed as there was no upper extremity support while writing.

Miss Bruiser, my favorite instructor was doing her gestapo waltz around the classroom depositing a brand new text book smack dab in the middle of the business end of the canoe paddle desk. We all knew what was coming next and dutifully treated our new books as if they were a hot branding iron. Like all "gifts" from the school, books came with a harsh admonishment. Everything from uniforms to housing had a price and I'm not referring to dollar signs.

"Before you students put your grubby little lunch hooks on these brand new textbooks, I have a little paper for you to read and sign," Miss Bruiser bellowed as she dolded out the pungent scented mimeographed documents. We were conditioned just like Pavlov's dogs to the scent of mimeograph ink. That unique smell spelled trouble in the form of a test, written admonishment, or stern warning from a rigid authoritarian instructor or senior nurse.

Here is what the nursing school party line was on handling our sacred nursing textbooks. Hold the book  with it's back resting on the surface of your desk; let the front cover down, then the other, holding the leaves in one hand while you open a few leaves at the back, then a few at the front, and so on, alternately opening back and front, gently pressing open the sections until you reach the center of the book. Do this several times for the best result. Open the volume violently or carelessly in any one place and you will break the back and cause a start in the leaves. Never, ever force the back of a book.

I let loose with a muted chuckle before endorsing the mimeographed missive and paid a heavy price; I had to "volunteer" as a patient while the sophomores practiced their phlebotomy skills on my prominent veins.

Fine Dining Hospital Nursing School Style

Oh..The tales that were told during mandatory dinner hour.

Vintage  hospital diploma schools were hybrid affairs: one part workhouse, one part charm school, and one part plantation. The charm school component made attendance mandatory  for the evening meal in the hospital cafeteria if you happened to be fortunate enough to work  on a clinical unit during the 3-11:30 shift. Sharing a meal together was probably  thought to have a positive  social impact on  hospital confined and culturally deprived nursing students

The nursing school had commandeered a long table in the very back of the chow hall. A sense of decorum was added to the ho hum environment by the use of genuine china dinner plates emblazoned with "IMMC School of Nursing  Dedicated to the Service of Mankind."  Another unique touch was the  disbursement of several bottles of Red Hot Sauce prominently displayed as a centerpiece.

Nursing students were undernourished in social experiences and overfed on shame and degradation  dished out by mean old coots masquerading as instructors. The fine china and special sauce adornment was a lame attempt to mitigate the harsh realities of life as a nursing student and spice things up a bit.

Working with the most challenging patients was difficult enough, but our tough minded, anal retentive instructors demanded strict self-regulation of our behavior. There was no crying, complaining, or lamentations of any sort permitted. We always answered to our hard core instructors in plantation speak, "Yes'um, No madame, and Right away," were stock replies.

So when we all sat down together for dinner, it felt as though a weight had been lifted off our shoulders. Typical dinner table conversation revolved around difficult nursing procedures and technical tips for their  successful completion. Occasionally the various foodstuffs were used as props. I will never forget the time my friend, Janess, demonstrated her prowess at removing fecal impactions by using a stale donut leftover from breakfast and an overcooked chunk of bratwurst. The key was to bury your finger well into the brat and the flex the distal phalanx into a hook like device before pulling it  through the donut.

Being the sole male at the dinner table had it's awkward moments when I was called to mediate arguments about boyfriends or menstrual cycles. Although I may have been a disinterested party my knowledge base was not up to snuff and led to lots of round about jibber jabber.

Our final dinner together as student nurses was held outside the hospital at a really nice nearby restaurant, The Ivanhoe, which was just down the street between Clark and Halsted.  The senior dinner held right before we were crowned GNs was memorable because or instructors were finally nice to us because we survived and were on our way to becoming peers. I made up my mind then and there that I was never going to treat anyone as we were treated as students.

Fun in The Sun at Diploma Nursing Schools

"After I sink this one, let's  visit the sun deck!"

Old time 3 year diploma nursing schools lacked the recreational amenities  of modern learning institutions, but they did provide some outlets for brow beaten,  harried students to unwind. The notion of fresh air and sunshine as a curative modality was a core value of the traditional Nightengale mindset; hospitals had solariums and almost every nursing school had a sundeck.

As sundecks were the common denominator at diploma nursing schools, most hospitals had at least one other diversional activity. Cook County School of Nursing had a magnificent indoor swimming pool. After a brief journey through dingy, rat infested catacombs an elegant facility complete with Romanesque columns emerged. The lavish pool was a  unique oasis oddly situated in the midst of a dingy, depressing, medically underserved environment of intractable social problems and abject poverty. A true diamond in the rough.

 Our hospital had a lowly pool table located adjacent to the sun deck entrance and students often picked up a cue and attacked the racked balls before sunning themselves. Nearby Ravenswood hospital had dual purpose sundeck that also served as a badminton court. Weiss Memorial Hospital had a combo shuffleboard court sundeck.

Most all sundecks in Chicago hospital nursing schools  were located on the roof of the nursing school as a concession to the cramped urban environment. The nurse's sundeck was on the roof and 4 stories off the ground at our beloved learning institution. (If you could even call it that.) The operating rooms on the seventh floor overlooked the nurse's residence sun deck and provided geezer surgeons an unobtrusive vector for ogling the scantily clad students. An amorous break from the rigors of the operating room was only three stories away and many took advantage of the opportunity.

A generous sized cedar wooden deck that occupied about a third of the roof top made up the formal deck. This structure was surrounded by a chain link fence that prominently commanded a sense of forbiddance. A few deck chairs and a large phony looking  plasticized   palm tree provided atmosphere. A tropical paradise amongst the Chicago concrete jungle seemed to be the idea.  Just toss a dime in the nearby beverage  vending machine for a can of Tab soda and stretch out on a beach chaise. Life was good.

Tropical Bliss Comes to a Chicago Nursing School

Sundeck activities, like everything else, were governed by the rules set forth in every student nurse's bible, the official student hand book. Here is what the powers at be had to say:
A sundeck is provided for the convenience and pleasure of the students. It is open from 8AM to sunset. School linens, pillows and blankets are not to be taken out on the sundeck. Radios are permitted on the sun porch if played softly. Suitable chairs, chaise lounges, and mats are provided and must be returned after each use. Some type of beach coat or covering must be worn to and from the sundeck.

Like Baptists, diploma nursing schools firmly believed in total immersion, not in water, but in the hospital milieu.  I think any oppressed minority cultivates  a latent rebellious streak and student nurses were no exception. The sundeck overlooked the faculty entrance to the hallowed halls of the lecture auditorium where bitter, hardened, old instructors put their students through their paces. After a severe ear beating on the clinical unit for a pillow oriented the wrong way  toward the door, one of the students, Rose, hatched a diabolical plot for revenge. An Asepto syringe and a bath basin created a sluice of water that cascaded over the sundeck just as the formidable Miss Bruiser made an appearance. She was an aficionado of flowing capes, but nevertheless received a generous soaking

Soon after Miss Bruiser's unfortunate encounter with the cascading fountain of water, a warning sign was posted; Any  student caught propelling any substance off the sun deck will be referred to the student disciplinary committee for possible expulsion. As young Rose loaded her Asepto for another aquatic volley she replied with a snicker, "They have to catch us first!"

Student Nurses Misappropriate Birth Certificates to Imbibe

Vintage diploma nursing schools had rigid, authoritarian  rules for just about everything  that could be construed as fun. From restrictions on outside visitors, especially men, to strict study hours, all recreational outlets were meticulously managed with onerous regulation. The rules regarding alcoholic beverages were especially strict and came from the hallowed chambers of  The Hospital  Board of Trustees. This mysterious and often cited governing body was a force to be reckoned with because just one measly slip up of their regulations could get you expelled from the nursing program.

According to the esteemed board, alcohol was the ultimate in forbidden fruit, especially for stressed out and underaged nursing students. The notion that imbibing in the magical elixir of alcoholic drink was wrong, made it all the more appealing. Diploma nursing students were in the same boat as Eve in the Garden of Eden.

By the time nursing specialties: pediatrics, psych, and obstetrics, rolled around, nursing students were feeling the pressure of their chosen vocation. I was going to say chosen profession, but we were brain washed into submission and nobody really believed we were worthy of such a lofty title. I'm just a nurse was our mantra. Doctors were professional-nurses were not.

All nursing specialties were difficult and stressful. Cures for seriously ill children were few and far between. Leukemia of any variety was a death sentence. Our clinical psych experience was on the back ward of a state hospital and it was your lucky day if your patient wasn't homicidal. I don't know which was more trying on your soul,  psych or pediatrics. It was a toss-up.

Obstetrics was different, especially post partum where the exuberance of young mothers was uplifting. Our time in OB was rotated in monthly intervals through delivery room, nursery, and post partum. Everyone had their particular favorite, but delivery room duty was the highlight of just about any young student  nurse's  training. The miracle of birth was something that stayed with you and served as an antidote to all the pain and suffering in the rest of the hospital. Birth and death were the ultimate Yin/Yang experience.

The delivery room had another up side. Stashed right next to vials of silver nitrate which was used prophylactically in  babies' eyes to prevent blindness from contact with gonorrhea was a stack of blank birth certificates.

The unwritten rule was that each student nurse was entitled to one blank birth certificate at the conclusion of their delivery room rotation. Students treasured documents from their various specialty rotations and I still have a plundered birth certificate along with a sponge count record from the OR and a restraint and seclusion record from psych.

I first learned what could be done with a blank birth certificate from one of my fellow students who had been released from Cook County School of Nursing as being unsuited for the practice of nursing. That "unsuited" business was a catch all phrase that covered a multitude of sins and was a step up from academic failure because some of these students were able to transfer to another diploma nursing program after "maturing." Transfer students were a valuable resource when it came to surviving nursing school because they knew many of subtle ins and outs of getting through the madness of three years of torture.

Light fingered nursing students knew exactly what to do with a poached birth certificate. "All you have to do is fill in your own name with a birthdate of more than 21 years ago and the document becomes your ticket to freedom from the evil clutches of the sanctimonious "dry" hospital environs," explained one of these wise transfer students. Time to unleash the libations.

Barkeepers found the neighborhoods surrounding hospitals as fertile ground for their trade. There was no shortage of stressed out workers that had pay checks to support their bar tabs. These taverns often had clever names like "Recovery Room" or "Barborygmi." The bar of choice near our hospital was "Ratzos" and the barkeep would just wink and pour when presented with a birth certificate with freshly inked infant footprints. This little charade had been going on for a very long time and was one of the dirty little secrets of old school diploma schools. Cheers! as Sue  would say.

Nursing School Housemothers

A Trifecta of housemothers at the entrance to the nursing school and dorm.

Old time 3 year diploma nursing schools did not need sophisticated security systems or cameras because immediately after entering the front door you were face to face with a housemother or "house hags" as we fondly referred to them. We used to compare them to cancer; always present (24/7) and they could spread out anywhere in the  school or dorm without warning to induce fear and worry in a hapless nursing student. They controlled anyone and anything that entered the combination dorm and nursing school. There was only one way in and one way out and everyone that entered the building had to pass by the housemother's desk which was just past the student's mail boxes. The housemothers were also in charge of the mail.

They were the front line enforcement of every rule and regulation that governed the life of a student nurse. Nursing school rules determined when and under which conditions you could leave the dorm, what you could bring into the dorm (one suitcase), and who you could bring into the dorm. There were also mandated study and lights out hours closely monitored by housemothers.

If you were not studying during "study hour" which curiously spanned the hours between 7PM and 11PM you could get busted by the housemother  with a demerit. If you had a light on after 11PM you were busted. If you went home for a weekend and forgot to sign out at the housemother's desk,  you were busted again. That "friendly" housemother in the center of the illustration above is interrogating a student about some irregularity found in the signout card box. Things like this never ended well for the student nurse.

It must have been a serious transgression such as changing the sign in time to comply with the strict curfew hours or perhaps signing in for a roommate  because the hag on the far right in the illustration is already on the hotline to the school of nursing director's office. That hotline to the directors office probably caused us more angst than President Kennedy's nuclear armament phone did during the Cuban missile crisis. Sometimes students would try to sabotage it (the house hags phone, not the missile crisis) by unplugging it at the jack or even gluing the receiver to the phone base. Housemothers were very resourceful and always got the phone up and working again.

Another method to escape the housemother's scrutiny was the "Australian Crawl" technique. When 2 students came in past curfew one would distract the househag with claims of sobriety or sweet talk while the other crawled past below the threshold of the hag's window. At least only one student received a demerit with this deception.

On the opposite side of the lobby within the housemother's scrutiny  were 2 visitation rooms for non-conjugal visits with boyfriends. The rooms were slightly larger than a bathroom stall with partitions raised about 2 feet off the floor. There were benches on either side of the tiny room  with a small full length table in between. The rules were one boy and one girl on each bench with feet visible on the floor at all times. There was a complex work around for this rule that required stuffing each boy's pant leg with a shirt or whatever was available and then arranging the pseudo  stuffed leg into a shoe. It worked every time, and at the least provided some togetherness for the couple without having to negotiate around  the dividing table.

Don't be deceived by that veneer of a cute little old lady. That psedo-friendly  little smile could turn into a vicious grizzly bear of a snarl faster than you could come up with an excuse or confabulate a defense to an egregious offense such as  smuggling cafeteria food into the dorm. Housemothers could be a veritable cafeteria of emotions almost like a bipolar psych patient that neglected to take their Lithium. You never knew what to expect from them.

Appearances can be deceptive, don't let those granny glasses fool you, housemother's had the visual acuity of a hawk. Oh, and don't think those old one piece housedresses could slow a motivated housemother  down, these ladies could run faster than Michelle Griffith Joiner  and close in on a suspicious activity faster than a linebacker on steroids. They were definitely not people to be trifled with.

When patrolling the dorms at 11PM for lights out enforcement they could move about in absolute silence. There stealth was enough to instill a profound sense of paranoia. At times, it seemed like they could be in two places at once.

I have stuck in my memory an image of a distressed young student nurse which appeared in our yearbook with the caption, "I have come here to work and study for the next three years." She really looked as though she had been sentenced to death by firing squad, but I suspect she had just had a run in with one of the housemothers about being 5 minutes off in her sign-out time. Those housemothers were a really scary bunch.