Negotiating nursing
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Nursing work; Women’s war work; Second World War; Gender boundaries; Professional boundaries; Women’s space; Nurses’ presence; Personal testimonDOI
10.7765/9781526147257ISBN
9781526147257OCN
1126166690Publisher
Manchester University PressPublisher website
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/Publication date and place
Manchester, UK, 2019Grantor
Classification
Social and cultural history
Second World War
Modern warfare
c 1938 to c 1946 (World War Two period)
History of medicine
Nursing