American Military Nurses: A Hundred Year Retrospective

From the Crimean War in 1853 to the Vietnam War in 1959 American Military nurses developed fictive communities, advanced military nursing practices and participated in war related community outreaches with the military and local organizations. As each war demonstrates the American Military nurses under battle conditions and chronically short staffed developed innovative nursing techniques, increased autonomy and the nursing profession. Despite these progressive advances the nurses struggled to acquire equal military rank, pay and benefits as the military hierarchy strove to limit their significance by defining femininity within a constrained context. Each of the wars explores these issues and others to various extents. Four Vietnam Era nurses share their wartime experiences