Nursing - Hektoen International

Four nurses caring for one patient

May 4, 2020

Four nurses are taking care of this sick patient, presumably in a hospital, clearly at a time when there was no nursing shortage. The one on the left is taking the patient’s pulse; one on the right seems to be staring into space. Vintage engraving of Victorian nurses caring for a dying man suffering from […]

Nurse brings in the meal for a convalescing patient

May 1, 2020

This scene is from the nineteenth century, when most sick people were being cared for at home. A family member is reading to a convalescing young woman, while a nurse seen on the far right is bringing in the patient’s medicine, or more likely the meal, which she has probably prepared herself. A girl reads […]

Operating room nurses

May 1, 2020

Two nurses and a male porter are returning to the ward a patient who has just undergone surgery. Another nurse is holding up a bottle of blood or saline. Operating room staff wheeling a patient back into a ward after an operation. Oil painting by Ethel Macmillan, ca. 1940. Credit: Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0) […]

Nurse dressing a wounded soldier during World War I

May 1, 2020

This painting by John Lavery, published in the Burlington Magazine, (September 2014, Vol. 156 | No. 1338) shows a wounded World War I soldier having his arm dressed by a nurse. She wears the traditional uniform of nurses, with a veil attached to her cap, reflecting the times when nurses were still being addressed as […]

Learning to heal

April 13, 2020

Jeanne Bryner Nora Mazur Newton Falls, Ohio, United States Top pieced by Jeanne Bryner Quilting done by Nora Mazur Jeanne Bryner: Quilts are important in my Appalachian culture. Narratives of beauty and truth are pieced together, preserving family history. This quilt contains photos of a special family of international sisters and brothers in the […]

Moments in nursing

April 13, 2020

Jeanne Bryner Nora Mazur Newton Falls, Ohio, United States Top pieced by Jeanne Bryner Quilting done by Nora Mazur Jeanne Bryner: On any given day, one of our cells may deviate from its usual path. Others cells may follow, leading us from a state of wellness to one of illness. How can we survive […]

“A Veritable Angel of Mercy”: the sardonic representation of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

March 23, 2020

Mariella Scerri Mellieha, Malta Group photograph of the first twenty Navy Nurses, appointed in 1908. Naval Photographer. 1908. Wikimedia. Public Domain. Critical acclaim and popular opinion have elevated Kesey’s first novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest published in 1962, to something of a modern classic, much read and written about as well as adapted […]

Is Mary Seacole the new mother of nursing?

February 13, 2020

Mariella Scerri Mellieha, Malta Sketch of Mary Seacole by Crimean war artist William Simpson (1823–1899), c. 1855. Source. The promotion of Jamaican businesswoman and “doctress” Mary Seacole as the pioneer nurse in place of Florence Nightingale was given considerable credence early in 2013, when Seacole was named a “pioneer of health care” by the UK Department […]

Grit

January 28, 2020

Romalyn Ante Wolverhampton, England My mother is right—my brother’s blood is getting dirtier. A nurse like me, she had read the result of his glomerular filtration rate, a test that measures how well the kidneys clean the blood. It had dropped below 15, an indication that his chronic renal failure was reaching its end […]

Pediatric nurse

November 12, 2019

A nurse checking on a playful child. Watercolour drawing by J.E. Sutcliffe, 1904. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0 Nurses are often the first point of contact for patients entering the medical system. They perform essential work, and often spend more time with patients then physicians do, ensuring treatment is performed and the body […]