Nurse Girl

World War II
• United States
As Campbell (1984) shows, the nursing profession was transformed by World War Two. The profession contained a basic tension between the tender loving care provided sick people, on the one hand, and the well-trained efficient specialists on the other was a historic tension in the nursing profession that was partially resolved by the war. The military wanted well-trained efficient specialists. All the services used enlisted men to handle the routine care of sick patients are wounded patients, and use their nurses as officers who were trained specialists. In military units, male doctors supervised female nurses, and both were officers, while the women in practice supervised large numbers of enlisted men. Although enlisted medic could become an officer, it was not easy, and none could become a nurse. Indeed there were no male nurses in the American military until years later. Army and Navy nursing was highly attractive and a larger proportion of nurses volunteered for service higher than any other occupation in American society. The nation responded by a dramatic increase in the numbers and functions of nurses, and a moderate modest increase in their pay scales, with the expansion powered by the training of 200,000 nurses aides by the Red Cross, and the creation of a temporary new government agency, the Cadet Nurse Corps, which enrolled 170,000 young women in speeding up training programs in the nation's 1200 nursing schools. About 5% five percent of the Cadet nurses, and Army nurses were black, but the Navy refused to accept black nurses until it was forced to admit a handful by the White House near the end of the war. The black Army nurses were used in all-black units, handle and to handle medical services for prisoners of war.