Reflect on 19th and 20th-century nurses and events discussed this week. Which
nurse or event form that time period will best guide your current professional
nursing practice? Why?
Before World War II the United States military had little interest in nurses
being used for evacuating wounded soldiers from battlegrounds. Due to the
extent of the war, the U.S. Army transformed the use of nurses for
aeromedical evacuation. The rapid expansion of air medical transportation
made it possible to fly wounded American soldiers to military hospitals. The
need for aeromedical nurses was critical after the invasion of North Africa in
1942 (National Museum of the United States Air Force, 2015). In 1943 the
United States Army Nurse Corps graduated their first flight nurses from
Bowman Field in Louisville, Kentucky (National Museum of the UNAAF, 2015).
A challenge to flight nursing was uniforms. Back then, nurses wore dresses;
flight nurses were the first to be able to wear trousers.
Flight nurse uniforms were first just cut down army uniforms. The nurses
who work as flight nurses in the frontline areas travel on aircraft, which
would be used to rescue and bring emergency supplies, which meant they
could be marked with the Red Cross insignia, making them more susceptible
to enemy attack. Many of these nurses were not paid and were volunteers
due to the danger of an enemy attack. Flight nurses had to be physically fit
just as the soldiers and nurses were prepared by learning crash procedures,
survival training, and flight physiology. Flight nurses during this time were
called "Winged Angles." One such nurse was Mary Hawkins.
Mary Louise Hawkins was born in 1921 in Denver, Colorado, and was part of
the first aeromedical nurse graduating class of 1943 (National Museum of
the UNAAF, 2015). Mary Hawkins was the first nurse to earn the
Distinguished Flying Cross during WWII. 1st Lt. Mary Louise Hawkins
evacuated 24 patients from fighting at Palau to Guadalcanal on Sept. 24,
1944. When the C-47, she was aboard ran low in fuel and was forced to
crash land on Bellona Island (National Museum of the USAAF, 2015). A
propeller ripped into the fuselage during a crash landing and cut a patient's
trachea.
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