Nurses' Duties

Women Nurses provided a wide range of services

Clara Barton tends the wounded at Antietam

At, first many men were very angry at the thought of women serving. They either felt it was unlady-like for women to care for naked men or that the horrible sights so prevalent inside hospitals should not be seen by female eyes. Women nurses went on to tend to the needs of the sick right on the battlefield, in field hospitals and in convalescent hospitals away from the front.

Some of the duties that they performed included:

Tending to and cleaning wounds
Feeding meals
Administering medications
Comforting the dying
Searching for wounded on the battlefields
Assisting doctors during operations
Writing letters for the soldiers
Talking to soldiers and building up moral
Transporting and delivering supplies
Overseeing sanitary conditions at various facilities
Standing up for their moral convictions
in the face of graft, correction, and incompetence
and changing it whenever they could.

Women Nurses were the unsung heros of this war, and we own them a great debt of gratitude.

BACK TO HOME PAGE NORTHERN NURSES

SOUTHERN NURSES CREDITS PAGE