#international nurses day

A quiet day so far for anniversaries, so I have to dig deep and create something from next to nothing,

May 12th each year is International Nurses Day.

Until the mid-nineteenth century, nursing was not an activity, which was thought to demand either skill or training. Nor did it command respect. As the English heroine of nursing, Florence Nightingale, said,  nursing was left to ‘those who were too old, too weak, too drunken, too dirty, too stupid or too bad to do anything else’

The intimate body services to be done for the patient were considered to be unseemly or immodest for young unmarried or well-bred females, especially if not a family member. Cleaning and feeding of another person were regarded as domestic tasks performed by servants.

Also, before 1880, the hospital treatment of illness was fairly rare. Where home services were adequate, a sick person was attended by the family doctor and nursed either by female family members or servants. However, from the middle of the nineteenth century, the discovery and application of anaesthetics and antiseptic surgery advanced medical technique and allowed all classes to seek treatment in hospitals. From the 1860s onwards, a series of nurses’ training schools began to produce fairly large numbers of educated women who were eagerly accepted by hospital authorities whose medical officers, patients and public opinion in general were demanding higher levels of nursing skill in the wards.

In Scotland, a series of nursing schools began to produce large numbers of educated women who were then accepted to work in hospitals. This resulted in demand for higher levels of nursing skill in the wards. For Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1887 fund-raising efforts led to the creation of an institution that would nurse the sick poor. In Scotland, this resulted in the formation of the Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland in 1889, based in Edinburgh. After training, nurses could be sent to work anywhere, from as far north as Shetland or down south to the Scottish Borders. This could mean serving a densely populated urban area or a rural one with vast distances between patients, such as that covered by the East Lothian Benefit Nursing Association.

Over time, nurses have been involved in wars, pandemics, daily emergencies, regular check-ups, and palliative care. There have also been numerous developments in all branches of nursing but what remains at the heart of it all is the commitment towards the promotion of health, prevention of illness, and the care of ill, disabled and dying people. Where would we be without these wonderful nurses!

Pics are from the  Queen’s Nursing website, first is District nurse  Elizabeth McPhee in 1926 astride her BSA motorcycle on the ferry slipway at Dornie, and yes that’s an unrestored Eilean Donan Castle in the background!  Annie Mackinnon, a nurse from Roag, Skye, she went to France during ww1 and was awarded a Croix de Guerre:  “for conspicuous bravery in continuing to care for the sick and wounded under enemy fire’.  Queen’s Nurse (QN) Katy Shearer, Loch Fyne, 1950. Midwife Catriona MacAskill weighing a baby in North Uist, 1959 and  Maryhill war nurse Louisa Jordan, made famous recently due to her name being used for the temporary hospital and vaccine centre at Glasgow’s SEC during the pandemic.

You can find more pics a history about Scottish nursing on the QNI  web site here https://www.qnis.org.uk/

“Thank you, Nurses!”

A quick sketch for 512 international Nurses Day

Character from Identity Five

Today is International Nurses Day!

Here at the UWM Archives, we want to wish all nurses a fantastic International Nurses Day!  First celebrated in 1965, International Nurses Day falls on the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birthday.  The International Council of Nurses announced that this year’s theme is Nurses: A Voice to Lead - A vision for future healthcare.  We are incredibly grateful for the hard work of all the nurses this past year!

The black and white photograph featured here shows a group portrait of Milwaukee County Hospital Nurses in 1939, with handwritten labels for Bertha Saunders, Minna Newhouse and Bessie Norstrant on the photograph.

This photograph can be found at the UWM Archives in box 1 of the Roman B.J. Kwasniewski Photographs as well as online in our Milwaukee Polonia Digital Collection.