A Tribute to Nurses – Those Who Have Come Before and Those Now Serving

Posted by donna@healthlawcenterplc.com in Jun, 2020

For over a century nurses have selflessly met extraordinary obstacles and challenges to care for their patients.  Most of their names had never made it to the history books nor had they always received awards or accolades.  Whether during times of war or national emergencies, nurses have always been on the front lines.  They provide compassionate, skilled and quality care, always with a “can do” attitude and never giving excuses.  We honor and pay tribute to those nurses who have served before and those currently using their talents, gifts and skills to comfort and care for others.  Here are just a fraction of notable nurses who embodied the spirit, passion and devotion to the nursing profession.

The Civil War Era – As a Union supporter in the Civil War, Mary Ann Bickerdyke, found herself accidentally drawn to nursing.  She was a middle-aged widow who raised money for hospitals built at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. After witnessing the suffering of soldiers who had no one to care for them, she felt compelled to attend to their needs.  She could have easily turned away, but her inner spirit told her what she needed to do.  She was the only woman that General William T. Sherman allowed with his army. At the Tennessee battle of Lookout Mountain she was the sole nurse for about two thousand men.

On the Confederate side, Captain Sally Tompkins was commissioned as an officer in the Confederate army, giving her the power to commandeer supplies. Her Richmond mansion was converted into Robertson Hospital.  Her commitment to quality of care at the time resulted in the lowest death rate of any facility in the North or South.  Her staff of six, four of whom were black women still in slavery, treated more than 1,600 patients and lost only 73.  That is an extraordinary accomplishment in an era before germ theory was understood.

In 1872 the first nation’s nursing school was established in Boston by Dr. Marie Zakrewska.  A graduate, Linda Richards, was credited as America’s first professionally trained nurse. Striving for excellence Richards went on to establish precedent-setting programs as the superintendent of nursing at New York’s Bellevue Hospital and at Massachusetts General Hospital.  She is also known for establishing the first nursing school in Japan.

Another graduate of the Boston nursing school was Mary Mahoney. Despite her dedication and informal training during the Civil War she was not able to be formally trained as a nurse because she was African American.  At the time most educational institutions did not admit African Americans.  Not willing to take no for an answer Mahoney was accepted in Boston’s nursing program and became the first credentialed black nurse when she graduated in 1879.    As segregation remained the rule, Mahoney led the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, which began in 1908.

Nursing in World War I — In May of 1917 Helen Dore Boylston served in France with the first Harvard Unit, a U.S. medical team that treated more casualties than any other group of American doctors and nurses during the conflict. The following excerpts from her diary provide a sense of the challenges she faced. 

March 24, 1918 – 4:00 am  — “… Our first warning that the convoys were coming was the low drone of motors — the ambulances, winding over the roads in the moonlight. As far as the eye could see they were coming. Just black beetles, crawling, scarcely a yard between them, and not a light anywhere. It was about an hour after supper, and there was an air-raid on. Not a very bad one, but our shells were coming over so low that our hair stood on end with every screech. Ruth and I were standing outside the mess watching the air-raid, when, through the sound of whistling shells, we heard a low purring note that had nothing to do with the jerky growl of Gothas. We exchanged a startled glance and started for Matron’s office, neither of us saying a word.

Just as we reached the Administration Hut the first ambulance stopped in front of us, the others close behind, and we had to wait until the boys were taken out. Nearly everyone should have been a stretcher case. Ragged and dirty; tin hats still on; wounds patched together anyway, some not even covered. The boys’ faces were white and drawn and their eyes glassy from lack of sleep. Some of them were not more than sixteen or seventeen. And they stood, ghastly in the pale light, waiting to be told where to go. There were great husky men crying with the pain of gaping wounds and dreadfully swollen, discolored trench feet, who sank down exhausted the moment they stopped. There were strings of from eight to twenty blind boys filing up the road, clinging tightly and pitifully to each other’s hands, and led by some bedraggled limping youngster who could still see.”

September 7, 1918 – “The lad was a Canadian, about twenty-two, with a frightful arm; elbow joint smashed, and the whole arm stiff and swollen, and full of gas gangrene. In getting off the dressing I had to move it some, and though I was as careful as I could be, I could hear the bones crunching and grating inside. Then I had to pull off hard, dry sponges, and haul out yards of packing that kept catching on the splintered bone. The lad just turned his head away and never made a sound — didn’t even grit his teeth. Once, accidentally touching a bare nerve-end with my forceps, I hurt him terribly and he turned his head to see what I was doing. I saw that his eyes were full of tears and the pupils enormously dilated with pain. But not a word out of him. No groaning. No “Please wait a minute, sister.” Just patient silence. I choked for an instant, and then burst out, “Oh, I’m awfully sorry, lad! I didn’t want to hurt you.” And he said, so gently, “It’s quite all right, sister. Carry on.”

Other notable nurses who served in World War I included:

Edith Cavell who was born in England in 1865 received her nursing training at the London Hospital.  During her service in Belgium, Cavell helped Allied prisoners to escape during World War I. She was arrested on August 3, 1915 and charged with protecting Allied soldiers. She was court-martialed for this crime and detained in isolation until she was executed after submitting her written confession.

United States Army nurse Beatrice MacDonald is noted for her bravery.  Although military leaders wanted to keep female nurses far from danger, they knew that soldier’s lives could be saved if their wounds were treated near the front line.  In August 1917, MacDonald was on duty at a casualty clearing station when she came under enemy fire during an air raid. Fragments of shrapnel from a bomb blast sliced through her eye. After being evacuated, MacDonald refused orders to go home, reportedly stating, “I have just started doing my bit.” With only one eye, MacDonald remained on duty in France until after the armistice, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

World War II Era – During the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943 the HMHS Newfoundland was one of two hospital ships sent to deliver 103 American nurses to the Salerno beaches. These hospital ships were attacked twice on one day by dive bombers, and by evening they were joined by a third hospital ship. Concerned by a number of near misses, it was decided to move the ships out to sea and anchor there for the night.

All three ships were brightly illuminated and carried standard Red Cross markings to identify them as hospital ships, to ensure their protection under the Geneva Convention. On September 9, 1943 U.S. Army nurse Vera Lee came close to being one of the estimated 460 women who died as a result of their service in World War II.  She was present when Allied forces launched a ferocious six-day invasion of Salerno, Italy. Although the white ship bore giant red crosses and was brightly illuminated at night, the Luftwaffe repeatedly bombed it, killing six British nurses and all medical officers aboard, and damaging the ship to such an extent that the Allies had no choice but to scuttle it on September 14.

Another nurse who served in both World War I and World War II was Laura M. Cobb. At the end of World War I she briefly served as a nurse at the Canacao Naval Hospital in Manila, Philippines.  After other assignments in the States and Guam she returned to Canacao Hospital in 1941, serving as its Chief Nurse.  The Naval Hospital was located next to the Cavite Navy Yard, and when it was attacked on December 10, 1941, she and other nurses remained with the wounded in Manila until the U.S. Military surrendered to the Japanese on January 2, 1942.   She along with eleven other nurses, known as the Twelve Anchors, were imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp for 37 months.  During this time she made it her mission to serve as the chief nurse to the other POW nurses, including some of the Angels of Bataan and Corregidor who were captured by the Japanese in and around Manila. For Cobb’s selfless devotion and invaluable leadership to her comrades she received a  Bronz Star and other commendations.

Notable Men in Nursing – Luther Christman also faced discrimination.  He was denied admission to two different nursing programs because of his gender. Although he eventually received a diploma from the Pennsylvania Hospital School of Nursing, he was denied his maternal rotation because of his gender.  Exemplifying leadership, he went on to establish the National Male Nursing Association, which was later renamed as the American Assembly for Men in Nursing.  Mr. Christman is also noted for serving contemporaneously as the dean of nursing at Vanderbilt University and director of nursing at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.  He also received accolades for being the first man to be inducted into the hall of fame of the American Nurses Association. In 2007, the American Nurses Association established the Luther Christman Award which “recognizes the significant contribution an individual man has made to the nursing profession.”

In the late 1970’s, Joe Hogan, an African-American sought to pursue his career and advance his education. Hogan decided that getting a bachelor’s degree in nursing would be one of the best ways to boost his career.  The closest nursing program that accepted men at the time was 150 miles away and was not practical for him to attend.  Hogan sent an application to the Mississippi University for Women. His application was denied and was told he could audit classes for no credit. Undeterred and refusing to be denied his dream, he filed a discrimination case against the University.  In 1982, the court ruled in his favor, ending school sex discrimination in publicly funded nursing schools throughout the country. 

Selflessness on 911 – Some nurses were among those killed in the September 11^th attack.  Two individuals who exemplified the altruistic nursing spirit were Kathy Mazza and Stephen Huzcko.   Both were trained as nurses but were working in the Port Authority Police Department at the time.  Like many first responders they were compelled to run into the North Tower to save those in need.  Mazza and Huzcko relied on their previous training as nurses while participating in the rescue effort of the North Tower. Their bodies was found five months later, next to a woman still strapped into a rescue chair. They were close to escaping but were unwilling to abandon someone who needed their help.

Hurricane Sandy — Following Hurricane Sandy there was no heat, no electricity, no phone, and no elevator service.  Many patients were in need of home care nursing services, requiring nurses to climb pitch black stairwells to get to those patients in need.  Suzanne Gilleran who trained nurses at her company was pressed into service along with all other registered nurses.  Their services were made more difficult by the weather, the power failures and the lack of public transit.  It took Gilleran three hours on the express bus from Forest Hills, Queens, to get to her patients.  Then there were the stairs. The lowest patient “was on the fourth floor,” she said, “the highest was on the 14th.”  “I realized,” she added, “I walked halfway up the Empire State Building, and most of the stairwells were pitch black.”

Allison Chisholm, worked for the Visiting Nurse Service in New York City and lived with a frail mother in Brooklyn. When the lights started flickering during the storm she had images of her mother falling in the dark. But she also had patients who needed her, including one receiving hospice care in a 12th floor apartment in Chinatown, and one needing an intravenous round of antibiotics in the West Village.  “It was treacherous driving during the hurricane,” said Ms. Chisholm.  “But it’s just something you have to do as a nurse. That continuity of care helps the healing. I don’t see this as being heroic. I have a conscience. I need to get to sleep at night.”

Nursing During the Corona Virus Pandemic – Lisa Cifanlino, is a nurse at Holy Name Hospital in New Jersey. She crossed state lines to save an 82-year-old Queens woman who was alone in her apartment and suffering from the coronavirus.  When the elderly woman started feeling sick she initially dismissed the symptoms as allergies.  As time went on family members noticed she was beginning to sound worse.  After more than two weeks and not improving, her son and daughter-in-law (Lisa’s sister) insisted on calling 911.  The elderly woman just wanted to stay one more night in her own apartment.

After hearing the panic in her sister’s voice Cifanlino stepped in and decided to rescue the 82 year old woman.  She lined the inside of her car with garbage bags, put on her personal protective equipment and a bottle of bleach as disinfectant. When she arrived in Queens the elderly woman was weak and turning blue. Ms. Cifanlino raced from Queens to Teaneck, New Jersey, where Holy Name’s emergency room team was awaiting their arrival.  The elderly woman has since made a full recovery.

In Closing – In these unprecedented times nurses are continuing the legacy of those featured here.  Some will call these nurses heroes.  Some will call them angels.  For those of us who have/had the honor to serve as nurses, we know the spirit and passion of being a nurse is inbred into our being and inner fiber.  It is inexplicable.

Those who are not nurses feel compelled to give thanks.  But nurses have never entered the nursing profession to receive thanks.  While nurses will humbly accept thanks from patients and families they know that is not what drives them.  What drives us is that nursing is not what we do, nursing is who we are.