"Led by the spirit of humanity": Canadian military nursing, 1914-1929.

Abstract

This study examines Canadian military nursing from the onset of the 1914 Great War to the end of the first post-War decade in 1929. Its purpose is to focus on the experience of military nursing in an attempt to discover the specifics of the profession, particularly during the interwar years, and to analyse the factors that affected military nursing during that era. The analysis of military nursing in context with the era revealed three main conclusions. First, unlike the peacetime experience, military nursing during the Great War was a professionally and culturally liberating experience that set Military Nurses apart form their civil peers. Unfortunately, during the interwar years, the re-instatement of Nursing Sisters to pre-War military positions of administration, removed them from the clinical setting, was deleterious to the profession, and did not accord them the opportunity to apply the practice element of their profession. Second, the introduction of non-commissioned men as hospital orderlies provided the major hospital military workforce that maintained the Nursing Sister's distance from the bedside and usurped them of their clinical focus and the opportunity to provide patient care. As an unfavourable offshoot to this, Military Nurses were restricted to administration. Without a practice component to their profession, Military Nurses had little in common with their civil peers who were actively engaged in practice and in activities to advance the profession. Last, the limitation imposed upon Nursing Sisters' by their appointment of relative rank precluded them from advancing within the military organization, from participating in the re-structuring of the CAMC and from influencing any policy that affected patient services or the Nursing profession. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)