Nurses are super heroes

Nurses have super powers

Nurses are needle poking, blood stealing, chart reading, bed-pan carrying, super heroes in scrubs, who will wake you up in the middle of the night to take your temperature. They tolerate cranky patients, even though they are exhausted from working two shifts and their feet hurt.

Nurses put up with us when we are at our worst – but nothing, neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night will stay these “Nightingales” from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

In Medieval times people who were sick were treated by the local woman who was skilled in the use of herbs and healing potions, or by the barber who cut hair, pulled teeth and set broken bones. Midwives assisted in childbirth and childhood ailments.

In the 1600s when the Pilgrims arrived in Jamestown, there was no medical care. Each colony was on its own. The Pilgrims expected family to take care of the ill.

In 1776, when the Revolutionary War began, Gen. Washington’s hastily mobilized Army had no medical corps, no Red Cross, no trained nurses. The nuns of the Catholic Church placed their hospitals and staff at the disposal of the military. A Congressional Resolution proposed one nurse for every 10 patients with pay of $2 per month.

Washington realized that, in order to keep the soldiers on the battlefield, he needed nurses and ordered that “camp followers” be trained as nurses to tend the sick and wounded.

After the Revolutionary War, male physicians took over the monopoly of medicine, and military nurses ceased to exist. One of the major casualties of the American Revolution was the military nurse. Congress established the Army Nurse Corps in 1901. Dora E. Thompson was appointed Chief nurse and once told an audience that it had been an uphill battle because “many people thought women were not suited for work in Army hospitals.”

During WWII, of the 99 nurses who served in Bataan, 22 escaped before American and Filipino troops surrendered to the Japanese in 1942. The remaining 77, captured and held as Prisoners of War, were rescued, and became known as the “Angels of Bataan.” Of the 201 nurses who died in WWII, only 16 of those deaths were attributed to enemy action. By the time the Vietnam War rolled around, recruiters were telling nurses to join the Army or Navy and see the world, have an adventure, and (possibly) find a husband.

In 1963, the first Navy Nurse Corps officers arrived in South Vietnam to serve at the U.S. Navy Hospital in Saigon, and aboard the Navy hospital ships. Four Navy nurses were awarded purple hearts when they were bombed on Christmas Eve. The nurses refused medical treatment so they could treat others who were injured. Of the more than 5,000 nurses who served in Vietnam, eight made the ultimate sacrifice.

Nursing is considered a “female profession,” but it is reported that men were the first students in a nursing school founded in 250 BC in India. Male nurses also helped care for patients in Europe during the Black Plague. However, U.S. nursing schools only accepted women. It took a Supreme Court ruling in 1982, to decree that the single-sex admission policy violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause. Men have been breaking through the gender barrier to pursue a career in nursing ever since.

Male nurses are becoming more common but they still face challenges when caring for female patients, on the other hand, male patients are often more comfortable with a male nurse.