Challenging nursing spaces

2018 ◽  
pp. 59-92
Author(s):  
Jane Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Patient Care ◽  
Nursing Care ◽  
Clinical Skills ◽  
Healing Process ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Hospital System ◽  
Nursing Sisters ◽  
Second World

The creation of spaces conducive to healing is a critical aspect of the provision of good nursing care. The nursing sisters of the British Army, having trained in the British hospital system would have been well versed in the need to create and maintain and environment in which healing could take place. The zones into which they were posted during the Second World War and the spaces they were given in which to care for their patients, were however, rarely either favourable to health or to the ‘serenity and security’ needed for recovery. Extreme weather conditions, limited water supplies, equipment and electricity combined to hinder all aspects of patient care. The often hostile places in which nurses worked demanded that they develop clinical skills and the ability to improvise and innovate in order create healing spaces for their soldier-patients. However, as the chapter argues it was the highly feminised home-maker work that created these spaces, which the nurses themselves credited to be an essential aspect to the healing process in which they were the critical performers.

Reasserting work, space and gender boundaries at the end of the Second World War

2018 ◽  
pp. 168-198
Author(s):  
Jane Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Hospital System ◽  
Work Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Boundaries ◽  
The Military ◽  
Nursing Sisters ◽  
Second World

The chapter considers the civilian world into which the Q.A.s returned at the end of the war and explores the options they faced. It begins with the immediate aftermath of war and the opportunities for interesting and worthwhile work that would only exacerbate the nursing sisters’ difficulties on demobilisation. This is followed by a consideration of the return to Britain and the options open for professional practice. The chapter argues that for some the option of interesting work remained, either in the colonial service or the military. However the main professional opening for returning nurses was the crisis ridden civilian hospital system that wanted and recruited cheap, malleable workers; this was not an attractive choice for demobbed nursing sisters. The chapter argues that despite nursing being a female dominated profession, the ideology that encouraged women to return to the home in the aftermath of war had significant ramifications for demobilised nurses. The social structure precluded married women from working outside the home and funds for postgraduate training available to returning male doctors were not offered to nurses. As the chapter maintains, most nursing sisters married, leaving the profession without their considerable talents and new ways of practicing.

scholarly journals “Not Only with Thy Hands, But Also with Thy Minds”: Salvaging Psychologically Damaged Soldiers in the Second World War

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-56
Author(s):  
Jane Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Mental Health Training ◽  
British Army ◽  
World War ◽  
Physical Trauma ◽  
Global War ◽  
Nursing Sisters ◽  
Second World

This essay breaks new ground in exploring the tensions in female nursing during the Second World War as the mental health needs of the injured were increasingly acknowledged. Advances in weaponry and transportation meant that the Second World War was a truly global war with mobile troops and enhanced capacity to maim and kill. A critical mass of female nursing sisters was posted to provide care for physical trauma, yet the nature of this uniquely modern war also required nurses to provide psychological support for troops readying for return to action. Most nursing sisters of the British Army had little or no mental health training, but there were trained male mental health nurses available. Publications of broadcasts by the Matron-in-Chief of the British Army Nursing Service detail the belief that the female nurse was the officer in charge of the ward when the patients had physical needs. However, that the nursing sister held this position when the patients’ requirements were of a psychological nature was at times tested and contested. Through personal testimony and contemporary accounts in the nursing and medical press, this essay investigates how female nursing staff negotiated their position as the expert by the psychologically damaged combatants’ bedside. The essay identifies the resourcefulness of nurses to ensure access to all patient groups and also their determination to move the boundaries of their professional work to support soldiers in need.

Daniel Tollet (ed), Les Vérités des uns et celles des autres: Points de vue de juifs et de chrétiens sur la Shoah en Pologne

2001 ◽  
pp. 414-415
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Haus
Keyword(s):  
Healing Process ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
World War ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
Academic Communities ◽  
Mutual Knowledge ◽  
The University ◽  
Second World

This chapter explores inter-group dialogues focused upon the healing process. Members of all races, nationalities, genders, and religions have sought to air their differences and to discuss possible resolutions as a means of moving into the future with a deeper mutual knowledge and understanding. Les Vérités des uns et celles des autres publishes the contents of one such academic dialogue. The book compiles materials delivered at a three-day conference held in Switzerland at the University of Fribourg in February 1994. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the conference aimed to explore Polish actions and attitudes towards Jews before, during, and since the Second World War. Participants included members of the Polish Catholic clergy, the Polish media, and the Polish and French academic communities.

Negotiating nursing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Nursing Service ◽  
Nursing Knowledge ◽  
Professional Boundaries ◽  
War Zone ◽  
Military Nursing ◽  
Post War ◽  
Nursing Sisters ◽  
Second World

Negotiating nursing explores how the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (Q.A.s) salvaged men within the sensitive gender negotiations of what should and could constitute nursing work and where that work could occur. The book argues that the Q.A.s, an entirely female force during the Second World War, were essential to recovering men physically, emotionally and spiritually from the battlefield and for the war, despite concerns about their presence on the frontline. The book maps the developments in nurses’ work as the Q.A.s created a legitimate space for themselves in war zones and established nurses’ position as the expert at the bedside. Using a range of personal testimony the book demonstrates how the exigencies of war demanded nurses alter the methods of nursing practice and the professional boundaries in which they had traditionally worked, in order to care for their soldier-patients in the challenging environments of a war zone. Although they may have transformed practice, their position in war was highly gendered and it was gender in the post-war era that prevented their considerable skills from being transferred to the new welfare state, as the women of Britain were returned to the home and hearth. The aftermath of war may therefore have augured professional disappointment for some nursing sisters, yet their contribution to nursing knowledge and practice was, and remains, significant.

Strategy on the Wintry Sea: The Russo-British Submarine Flotilla in the Baltic, 1914–1918

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-218
Author(s):  
Ian Ona Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Iron Ore ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Severe Weather ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

From 1914 to 1917, in severe weather conditions on the icy Baltic Sea, Russian and British submariners contested control of the sea lanes with the German Imperial Navy. Their accomplishments were largely forgotten after the war’s end. However, the Russo-British Baltic Submarine Flotilla played an important role in the war at sea in the First World War. Most significantly, in 1915 the Flotilla wreaked havoc on German naval planning and nearly cut Germany’s critical iron ore imports from Sweden. The results would lead to a strategic crisis in the German Imperial Admiralty Staff and delay Germany’s attempt to break the British blockade until 1916. Here, the significance of the Russo-British Baltic Submarine Flotilla to the broader strategy of the First World War – and its later impact on strategy in the Second World War – is re-examined.

Gender and the Second World War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinna Peniston-Bird ◽  
Emma Vickers
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Second World
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document