Island Nurses

This book takes a fresh look at community nursing history in Great Britain, examining the essentially generalist and low profile, domiciliary end of the professional nursing spectrum throughout the twentieth century. It charts the most significant changes affecting the nurse’s work on the district including compulsory registration for general nursing, changes in organization, training, conditions of service, and workload. A strong oral history component provides a unique insight into the professional images of district nursing and the complexities of inter- and intra-professional relationships as well as into the changing day-to-day working experiences of the district nurse at ‘grass-roots’ level. Use of oral history and records of individual nurses attempts to rectify the tendency of nursing history to view nurses as if they were a homogenous group of professionals, thereby recognizing the different experiences of nurses in different regions and environments. The book also considers the degree of influence of medically related technologies and of developments in drugs, materials, communications, and transport on the professional development of district nursing. The work addresses issues of gender relationships central to a nursing profession largely composed of women (throughout much of the period) working alongside a largely male-dominated medical profession.

This book documents how nurses have shown their dedication, courage, expertise and compassion in helping communities prepare for, respond to and recover from disastrous events. It aims to inspire and equip nurses and other health professionals to help people in disaster-affected areas and contribute to community resilience. The last decade (2005-2015) has been characterized by a number of overwhelming natural disasters - tropical storms, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis; and threats of emerging infectious diseases - SARS, MERSCoV and Ebola around the world. Countries from the Asia Pacific region, such as Australia, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Nepal, Philippines, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Thailand and Vanuatu, have borne the brunt of the devastation caused by these catastrophic events. Nurses from these countries have stepped in providing emergency care in hospitals and in the field, addressing public health needs in evacuation centers, supporting epidemiologic surveillance and conducting health education, training and research, to help save lives and support communities build back better.

Since the pioneering work of nineteenth-century nurses such as Florence Nightingale, Dorothea Dix and Clara Barton, professional nurses have been involved in caring for the sick and wounded in combat situations. This book contains the accounts of 14 nurses who served in the U.S. military nurse corps during the Persian Gulf and Iraq wars. These men and women describe how they found themselves serving during wartime, the soldiers they cared for, the professionals they worked with and the impact they made in their patients' lives. These varied accounts attest to the tremendous impact this profession has on the lives of individual soldiers and the health of armies at large.

Leonie Howie and Adele Robertson live and work on remote Great Barrier Island-so called because it faces the full brunt of the wild Pacific weather and acts as a barrier for the mainland about 100 kilometres away. With a population of about 1000, no reticulated electricity, no ATM machine, no street lights and one pub, this is a wildly beautiful place. It has a long history of farming, whaling and fishing, and the people who live here are a resilient lot, proud of their community. Midwifery and nursing on a remote island bring a wide range of dramas and emergencies, and here Adele and Leonie share the islanders' stories-sometimes tragic, sometimes happy, sometimes funny-from over 30 years of challenging yet uplifting work.

Medicare is arguably Canada’s most valued social program. As federally-supported medicare enters its second half-century, Medicare’s Histories brings together leading social and health historians to reflect on the origins and evolution of medicare and the missed opportunities characterizing its past and present. Embedding medicare in the diverse constituencies that have given it existence and meaning, contributors inquire into the strengths and weaknesses of publicly insured health care and critically examine medicare’s unfinished role in achieving greater health equity for all people in Canada regardless of race, status, gender, class, age, and ability. Fundamental to the stories told in Medicare’s Histories is the essential role played by communities ¬– of activists, critics, health professionals, First Nations, patients, families, and survivors – in driving demands for health reform, in identifying particular omissions and inequities exacerbated or even created by medicare, and in responding to the realities of medicare for those who work in and rely on it. Contributors to this volume show how medicare has been shaped by politics (in the broadest sense of that word), identities, professional organizations, and social movements in Canada and abroad. As COVID lays bare social inequities and the inadequacies of health care delivery and public health, this book shows what was excluded and what was – and is – possible in health care.

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