Nurses on the Front Line: When Disaster Strikes, 1878-2010

This book examines how nurses have responded to natural and man-made disasters in the in the US and Canada over the course of the previous and current centuries. It identifies the care delivered during various disasters; explicates how nurses at the local level intersected with the American Red Cross (ARC), American Nurses Association (ANA), the U.S. Public Health Service, and other federal/state organizations; describes how this intersection changed over time; and analyzes how issues of race, class, and gender influenced the ways nurses and other health care professionals responded to disasters. In each disaster, the safeguards developed, such as urban fire departments and hospitals, were overwhelmed. At the same time, these disasters (see TOC) prompted health care workers, survivors, and civic and private organizations to reflect on the character and speed of responders as documented in letters, memoirs, oral histories, newspaper stories, and professional publications. This book, while asserting that nurses and other health care workers sought to restore stability in the aftermath of a chaotic event, also illustrates how such events can temporarily unravel stable gendered, social, racial, and geographical boundaries while informing and changing professional attitudes to, and standards of, practice. Nine disasters, from the Galveston hurricane of 1900 to the Coconut Grove nightclub fire to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, are discussed.