Quiet Manners Always the Best

A folding doctor’s medicinal spoon, a pap spoon and a half teaspoon measuring spoon.— A doctor once told me that if women in the home wanted to learn but one branch of nursing and wanted that to be the most helpful it should be this matter of manner and professional etiquette.

“If there be a regal solitude it is the sick bed. How the patient lords it there!”— Charles Lamb

One of the best things about a good trained nurse is her manner, and it for that alone that a doctor sometimes requests the services of a nurse, when some member of the patient’s family might be perfectly to read thermometers, competent to keep charts and otherwise attend to the bodily wants of the patient. But the nurse's professional manner does much to soothe the nerves of the sick person and it does quite as much to expedite the doctor’s calls, and to accomplish what would be impossible to accomplish without the protection of the nurse's manner.

A doctor once told me that if women in the home wanted to learn but one branch of nursing and wanted that to be the most helpful it should be this matter of manner and professional etiquette. As a matter of fact few women do the right thing at the right time when the doctor comes. There is nothing that a doctor dreads so much, outside of a relapse or a weak heart, as an anxious mother with a taste for recounting anecdotes— long drawn out anecdotes that begin when the doctor enters the house and extend through his visit and then follow him down the stairs and keep him standing there hat in hand for whole minutes at a time till she brings the tale to completion. Then, of course, there are the deluded women who like to cheer the doctor on with a piece of fresh cake or some doughnuts.

There are times, however, when it is extremely considerate to provide some sort of refreshments for the doctor. If he has been watching some sort of refreshments for the doctor. If he has been watching through a long night of sickness it would be inconsiderate not to think of his hunger. Then it is courteous to prepare a dish of bouillon with bread and butter sandwiches, or a cup of coffee or tea and bring it to the doctor on a tray. If you ask him beforehand, do not ask him whether he will have it. Rather say some- thing like this: “I am sending up a tray for you. You are surely faint. Do you prefer bouillon, tea or coffee?—all are in readiness.”

It is in extremely bad form— in fact the worst offense against the etiquette of the sickroom for members of the family to remain in the room after the doctor has come. One member of the family, who is acting as nurse only, should remain during the visit, but she should make no uninvited comments on the patient, and it is considerate to leave the doctor alone within the patient’s hearing, if only for a minute or so, as many sick persons have some usually fanciful, confidences to make to the doctor. There is something about the room that worries them and they are unwilling to tell the faithful mother or sister who is nursing them, relying on his tact to have the change made without giving offense. — By Marshall Duffee, 1918

 🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia