She did not return home until after the war. Here are brief biographies of a few of those nurses. Courageous and competent, they reflect the same spirit as the brave nurses of the Civil War. Among many other roles, they contribute to clinical research, support surgeons in the operating room, educate patients and families about issues critical to treatment and survivorship, and provide direct care to patients, sometimes specializing in such areas as chemotherapy or bone marrow transplants. Our highly skilled nurses at Roswell Park continue that legacy. She later co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. Out of a class of 40, she was one of only four women who graduated, becoming the nation’s first formally trained black nurse. In 1878, 33-year-old Mary Eliza Mahoney, the daughter of freed slaves, enrolled in the same program. Linda Richards, the first graduate of the intensive 16-month program, went on to establish the system we use today of maintaining individual medical charts and records for patients. was established at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1872. The first formal nurse training program in the U.S. In 1869, four years after the war ended, the American Medical Association convened a committee to investigate whether there was a need for nurse training programs, concluding later, “It is just as necessary to have well-trained, well-instructed nurses as it is to have intelligent and skillful physicians.”Ībove left: Linda Richards. Sanitary Commission were approximately half those of other facilities.) In the wards where there was the best nursing, there were always the fewest deaths.” (In fact, disease rates in wards overseen by the U.S. But by the end of the war, they had earned the respect of their patients and the medical community, who had come to rely on them.Īfter the war, a Wisconsin soldier who had been treated at the Adams Hospital in Memphis wrote, “A careful observation of over two years has taught me that nursing is fully as important as medicine. In most hospitals they changed dressings, washed patients, prepared meals and fed the men, emptied bedpans and chamber pots, administered medications and wrote letters to the men’s families at home.ĭriven by compassion, nurses of the Civil War worked long hours in extremely difficult conditions, put their own lives at risk and often suffered the outright contempt of surgeons and military officials. In some hospitals they assisted surgeons. Nurses’ duties varied depending on whether they served in hospitals, field hospitals close to the battlefields or on the battlefields after the fighting stopped. If they could read and were very lucky, they might have a copy of the 1837 handbook The Family Nurse to refer to when caring for the sick and elderly at home. For the most part, women learned nursing from their mothers. No previous training was required to be a nurse, because no training programs existed. Nuns from various religious orders also served as nurses, and there were women and men who served as nurse volunteers - just not in an official capacity. Louisa May Alcott served as a nurse at this hotel-turned-hospital in Washington, DC. Obedient to regulations and supervisors.Able to commit to at least three months of service.They could choose pay of either $12 per month or 40 cents per day plus meals. The commission also recruited and managed nurses. Its mission: to generate financial support to meet the medical needs of the military to acquire and distribute food, clothing and medical supplies to soldiers and military hospitals and to organize military hospitals and camps and arrange transportation for the wounded. Sanitary Commission, a private organization recognized by the federal government but run by civilians. Things began to change in June of 1861 with the creation of the U.S. If we could be sure of being half-way well cared for when we get sick or wounded, it would take away immensely from the horrors of army life.” One soldier described the insanity of the system: “In the hospital, men lie on rotten straw.the nurses are convalescent soldiers, so nearly sick themselves that they ought to be in the wards, and from their very feebleness they are selfish and sometimes inhuman in their treatment of patients. When they began to feel better, they were pressed into caring for others who were sicker. Recovering soldiers were often pressed into serving as nurses for those who were sicker.ĭuring the first months of the war, the nurses in an Army hospital were mostly soldiers who were themselves recovering from disease or injury.
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