Kirsty Harris

Negotiating Nursing: British Army Sisters and Soldiers in the Second World War

Health and History, 2018

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Vane Tempest Edith Blake book review for Health History

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Edith Blake’s War: The Only Australian Nurse Killed in Action During the First World War by Krista Vane-Tempest

Health and History

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“All for the Boys”: The Nurse–Patient Relationship of Australian Army Nurses in the First World War

First World War Nursing - New Perspectives , 2013

The thousands of professional female nurses in the Australian Army Nursing Service working overse... more The thousands of professional female nurses in the Australian Army Nursing Service working overseas in World War I experienced changes to many facets of their work as they nursed wounded and sick men often miles away from home. Australian authors Jan Bassett through Guns and Brooches, and Rupert Goodman through Our War Nurses, largely wrote Australian Army nursing 'into being', providing a chronology of the progress of military nurses through Australia's involvement in overseas conflicts. 1 Their works highlighted the personal impact of war on nurses themselves against a background of military nursing administration and nurse movements. 2 Others have also written on Australian military nurses reducing the paucity of scholarly research into nursing and military nursing history in Australia although publications are of an uneven quality. 3 War transformed nursing practices and thus altered the relationship between nurses and patients. While the basic protocols for patient care learnt in the nurses' civilian hospitals remained the foundation of their army nursing work, military organization and operation wrought change to almost every aspect of nursing. The clinical relationship changed as peacetime nurses learned to manage new types of war wounds and unknown illnesses; consequently, so too did nurse-patient relationships. These relationships can be defined as having five recognized components-trust, respect, professional intimacy, empathy and power. These components were often intertwined and variable. Drawing on diaries, personal narratives, letters, published accounts and interviews, this chapter examines the changing nature of these components in the renegotiated relationships between Australian nurses and patients in the multi-nation military environment. War nursing From Australia's first major engagement in the war on 25 April 1915, nurses suddenly carried significant decision-making in triage, first aid and pain management. This significantly empowered Australian nurses and created the environment where male soldier patients had to increase their trust in the expertise of the nurse. Triage-the assessment, admission, classification and distribution of military casualties for treatment-reversed the 'natural' order of care and overturned the nurses' ingrained protocol of helping the worst cases first. Now the least wounded and less sick received the earliest treatment while those with the slimmest chance of survival were dealt with last. Many Australian nurses such as Margaret Edis learnt and used the process of triage: What we were doing was standing there inspecting their wounds, if they were not soaked through, inspecting that they had had their anti-tetanus injection, if their condition was fit … If they were not considered fit they were drafted [to] the other side and their wounds inspected by the doctors or done. 4 Although the number of nurses allocated to a military hospital was considered adequate, often the number was depleted or the bed number greatly increased which made the situation unworkable. 5 The primary literature is littered with the nurses' dismay over staffing and the volume of wounded. Elsie Sheppard Cook's diary on 1

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Negotiating nursing - book review

Negotiating nursing, 2018

Negotiating nursing explores how the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (Q.A.s) ... more 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 trans...

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New horizons: Australian nurses at work in World War I

Endeavour, 2014

More than 3000 nurses from Australia served with the Australian Army Nursing Service or the Briti... more More than 3000 nurses from Australia served with the Australian Army Nursing Service or the British nursing services during World War I. These nurses served in various theatres of war including Egypt, France, India, Greece, Italy and England. They worked in numerous roles including as a surgical team nurse close to the front working under fire; nursing on hospital ships carrying the sick and wounded; or managing hospital wards overrun with patients whilst dealing with a lack of hospital necessities. The skills and roles needed to be a military nurse significantly differed to the skills required to nurse in Australia.

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Girls in Grey: Surveying Australian Military Nurses in World War I

History Compass, 2013

This essay surveys Australian military nursing history during World War I, providing an overview ... more This essay surveys Australian military nursing history during World War I, providing an overview of this emerging historical field, a sub section of nursing history. It traces contributions made by both academic and non-professional historians to the historical contextualisation of the experience of military nursing, and points to new directions for future investigation.

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Health, healing and harmony

One hundred years of wartime nursing practices, 1854–1953, 2015

In the 'Grey Battalion': Launceston General Hospital Nurses on Active Service in World War I

Health and History, 2008

Nearly fifty nurses from the Launceston General Hospital served with the Australian Army Nursing ... more Nearly fifty nurses from the Launceston General Hospital served with the Australian Army Nursing Service or the British nursing service during World War I. These nurses served in countries that included Egypt, France, India, Greece, Italy and England. They worked in various roles including as a surgical team nurse close to the front working under fire; nursing on hospital ships carrying the wounded; or managing wards overrun with patients on ships at Gallipoli in 1915, whilst dealing with a lack of hospital necessities. This case study, of one group of nurses, shows that their experiences reflected the skills and roles needed to be a military nurse of the time, significantly different to the skills required to nurse in Australia.

More Than Bombs and Bandages: Australian Army Nurses at Work in World War I

More than Bombs and Bandages exposes the false assumption that military nurses only nursed. Based... more More than Bombs and Bandages exposes the false assumption that military nurses only nursed. Based on author Kirsty Harris' CEW Bean Prize winning PhD thesis, this is a book that is far removed from the 'devotion to duty' stereotyping offering an intriguing and sometimes gut wrenching insight into the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) during......

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Fannie Eleanor Williams: Bacteriologist and Serologist

This chapter reveals the vital role of Fannie Eleanor Williams in the field of medical science in... more This chapter reveals the vital role of Fannie Eleanor Williams in the field of medical science in Australia. It argues that Williams, as a bacteriologist and serologist from the early days in Adelaide to her long career at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Melbourne, should be more highly recognised as a leader in her research, laboratory management and mentoring. Although her contribution to medical science has been undervalued, she was the first female to undertake some of her activities and in doing so led the way for other women. This leadership role has been made invisible as a result of historians' patriarchal presumptions about women's roles and work. The chapter rectifies some of the misconceptions within the historiography of Australian science that have obscured Williams' leadership.

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The Gates Of Memory: Australian People's Experiences And Memories Of Loss And The Great War

Melbourne Historical Journal , 2004

The article reviews the book The Gates of Memory: Australian Peoples Experiences and Memories of ... more

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Anzac Day not just for the boys

By the late 1920s, Anzac Day had become male-centric. But that wasn’t the case during WW1 and the... more

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Health, healing and harmony: invalid cookery and feeding by Australian nurses in the Middle East in the First World War

A Century of Wartime Nursing Practices, 1854-1954, 2015

Invalid cookery was a key skill of trained nurses up until the 1960s and before the introduction ... more Invalid cookery was a key skill of trained nurses up until the 1960s and before the introduction of intravenous feeding was the sole way of keeping sick and wounded patients alive. Although historically seen as mundane, food preparation and feeding took significant amounts of time of a nurse’s daily work. For Australian military nurses on hospital ships and working in hospitals in Egypt and Greece in 1915, feeding soldiers suffering malnutrition and wounds became a significant part of a military nurse’s workload and inventive solutions were necessary in countries overflowing with casualties and short on food supplies. Neglected in the rich and growing body of military and civilian hospital histories in Australia, invalid cookery is a lost part of nursing work these days and thus is of interest to those seeking to define nursing practice in this period.

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New horizons: Australian nurses at work in World War I

Endeavour, Jul 2014

More than 3000 nurses from Australia served with the Australian Army Nursing Service or the Briti... more More than 3000 nurses from Australia served with the Australian Army Nursing Service or the British nursing services during World War I. These nurses served in various theatres of war including Egypt, France, India, Greece, Italy and England. They worked in numerous roles including as a surgical team nurse close to the front working under fire; nursing on hospital ships carrying the sick and wounded; or managing hospital wards overrun with patients whilst dealing with a lack of hospital necessities. The skills and roles needed to be a military nurse significantly differed to the skills required to nurse in Australia.

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Researching Australian World War I nurses

Practical tips to help you find your nursing relation who saw active service in World War I I ha... more

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Book: More than Bombs and Bandages: Australian Army nurses at work in World War I

More than Bombs and Bandages, 2011

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All for the boys: the nurse-patient relationship of Australian Army Nurses in the First World War

First World War Nursing - New Perspectives, 2013

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Girls in Grey: Surveying Australian Military Nurses in World War I

This essay surveys Australian military nursing history during World War I, providing an overview ... more This essay surveys Australian military nursing history during World War I, providing an overview of this emerging historical field, a sub section of nursing history. It traces contributions made by both academic and non-professional historians to the historical contextualisation of the experience of military nursing, and points to new directions for future investigation.

Download

Researching Australian World War I nurses

Practical tips to help you find your nursing relation who saw active service in World War I

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