This oral history shares stories of Kentucky nurses—from frontier births to emergency rooms and from the early twentieth-century to the present day. From frontier times to the present day, Kentucky nurses have served with intelligence and energy, always ensuring that their patients received the best available care. Folklorist and oral historian William Lynwood Montell collects nearly two hundred stories from these hard-working men and women in Tales from Kentucky Nurses. From humorous anecdotes to spine-chilling coincidences, tragic circumstances, and heartwarming encounters, the tales in this lively volume are recorded exactly as they were told to Montell. This collection features anecdotes from the famous Frontier Nursing Service, which provided essential care to families in remote areas of the state and whose leader, Mary Breckinridge, is remembered for her wit and kindness. In addition, Montell's interviewees share ghost stories and describe folk remedies like the practice of placing an axe under a woman's pillow during labor to cut the pain. These firsthand accounts not only pay homage to an underappreciated profession but also preserve important aspects of Kentucky's history not likely to be recorded elsewhere.
The nearly 350 humorous, heartwarming, and sometimes tragic accounts presented in William Lynwood Montell's latest book, Tales from Kentucky Doctors, offer an unusual perspective on the culture and tradition of Kentucky health-care practice. From the laughable to the laudable, Tales from Kentucky Doctors present illuminating portraits of doctors and patients, drawing stories from physicians with lifetimes of experience serving Kentucky families. In chapter 2, doctors recall the successes and failures that shaped their early careers. For Dr. Baretta R. Casey of Hazard, becoming a doctor was a difficult journey. Already married and with a child, Casey enrolled in college at age thirty, later completed medical school, and began a successful career as a family practitioner in the 1990s. Though patient visitations and doctors' prescriptions are recorded on account ledgers, personal relationships and memories are not part of medical records. The section "Personal Practice" gives a glimpse of the intimate relationships doctors form with their communities. "I doubt that any individual was nearer to the family than the family doctor," Dr. W. L. Tyler says in one story. For many towns, family physicians were heroes. Dr. James S. Brashear relates the challenges of practicing in Central City, a coal mining town, recalling an incident in which he saved the lives of two miners. Handed down to Montell in the oral tradition, the tales presented in this collection represent every part of the state. Personal experiences, humorous anecdotes, and local legends make it a fascinating panorama of Kentucky physicians and of the communities they served.
Introduces readers to prison workers as they share stories, debate the role of corrections in American racial politics and social justice, and talk about the important function of humor in their jobs.
Looking back, author Pamela J. Brink never really wanted to be a nurse, but when she was in high school, she couldn’t think of any other career for women she felt drawn to. She was expected to go to college, but she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. In An Academic Nurse’s Tale, Brink narrates her story, telling how her choice turned out to be a perfect one. She began her nursing career in the 1950s, and it spanned the most turbulent times in nursing education in the United States. Brink documents the times, offering a glimpse of the remarkably interesting period in the development of education, research, theory, and skills. She also presents a look at the ever-changing aspects of academic nursing. An Academic Nurse’s Tale gives firsthand insight into the versatility of a nursing career and describes the interesting, challenging, and rewarding aspects of the profession.
There was a time when the average American woman was more likely to die from childbirth than from any other condition except tuberculosis. This was especially true in areas where hospitals and quality medical care were scarce or nonexistent. But deep in the rolling hills of eastern Kentucky's Cumberland Range, one woman almost single-handedly changed those dismal figures. Her name was Mary Breckinridge, and her goal was to introduce quality, professionally trained midwifery to the United States. The Frontier Nursing Service, opened in 1925 in Leslie County, Kentucky, set out to meet the health needs of women and infants in one of the poorest regions of America. This book tells the story of Breckinridge's unparalleled dedication to midwifery and provides a historical overview of the first 40 years of the Frontier Nursing Service.
"This book offers an interesting historical backdrop to nursing in rural parts of the US. Each of the nine chapters presents an individual case study from a different geographic area and focuses on a different ethnic population... Recommended. Nursing collections serving all levels of students, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners." J. Clawson, University of Central Missouri CHOICE "Each chapter depicts nurses facing and overcoming a multitude of challenges as they addressed the medical needs of rural Americans. Because of their spirit of acceptance and community cooperation, their outcomes were remarkable: fully immunized communities, a decrease in mortality rates, statewide health policy implementation, and growth in community pride. The resilience of these nurses and their communities serves as a source of professional pride for problems solved and health enhanced." Mary S. Collins, PhD, RN, FAAN Glover-Crask Professor of Nursing Director, DNP Program Wegmans School of Nursing St. John Fisher College Rochester, NY Tracing the history of nursing in rural America during the first half of the 20th century, this well-researched book describes how nurses shaped health care delivery in remote, isolated rural settings, and analyzes how insights from their remarkable achievements in the face of formidable barriers can be applied to health care today. The book examines the multiple factors that influenced how and why nurses responded to the health care needs of rural residents, with coverage of rural nursing from the advent of the American Red Cross to Mary Breckinridge and her legendary Frontier Nursing Service; from rural Maine to the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners region. Through case histories, it depicts how nurses, working in the hinterlands of place, race, class, and ethnicity, broke geographic, cultural, and economic barriers to provide quality care. Based on nine actual case histories throughout America, the book identifies how nursing care was delivered to rural communities during the first five decades of the 20th century (before the advent of Medicare and Medicaid), and analyzes the impact of gender, class, race, policy, and place on rural health care delivery. It describes how nurses used ingenuity and self-reliance in order to practice to the full extent of their education, and explains how they provided access to care and health education in the face of many barriers. By documenting the reality of rural nursing in several different areas of the country and within multiethnic populations, the book also fills a gap in health care history. It provides historical primary source data that supports concepts, theory, and practice in rural nursing today. The book also highlights nursesí advocacy for their often disenfranchised patients, and examines how we can learn from their achievements to provide quality health care today. Key Features: Traces the history of rural nursing during the first half of the 20th century through nine case histories Describes nursing care for populations including adults, children, itinerant tenant farmers, and rural poor throughout the continental United States Showcases how nurses can serve diverse populations lacking a quality health care infrastructure Provides analysis of past rural nursing as it can help guide nursing today Offers historical primary source data that supports theory and practice in rural nursing today
"Sisters of Mokama is proof that faith and courage does move mountains."—Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone The never-before-told story of six intrepid Kentucky nuns, their journey to build a hospital in the poorest state in India, and the Indian nurses whose lives would never be the same New York Times editor Jyoti Thottam’s mother was part of an extraordinary group of Indian women. Born in 1946, a time when few women dared to leave their house without the protection of a man, she left home by herself at just fifteen years old and traveled to Bihar—an impoverished and isolated state in northern India that had been one of the bloodiest regions of Partition—in order to train to be a nurse under the tutelage of the determined and resourceful Appalachian nuns who ran Nazareth Hospital. Like Thottam’s mother’s journey, the hospital was a radical undertaking: it was run almost entirely by women, who insisted on giving the highest possible standard of care to everyone who walked through its doors, regardless of caste or religion. Fascinated by her mother’s story, Thottam set out to discover the full story of Nazareth Hospital, which had been established in 1947 by six nuns from Kentucky. With no knowledge of Hindi, and the awareness that they would likely never see their families again, the sisters had traveled to the small town of Mokama determined to live up to the pioneer spirit of their order, founded in the rough hills of the Kentucky frontier. A year later, they opened the doors of the hospital; soon they began taking in young Indian women as nursing students, offering them an opportunity that would change their lives. One of those women, of course, was Thottam’s mother. In Sisters of Mokama, Thottam draws upon twenty years’ worth of research to tell this inspiring story for the first time. She brings to life the hopes, struggles, and accomplishments of these ordinary women—both American and Indian—who succeeded against the odds during the tumult and trauma of the years after World War II and Partition. Pain and loss were everywhere for the women of that time, but the collapse of the old orders provided the women of Nazareth Hospital with an opening—a chance to create for themselves lives that would never have been possible otherwise.
*A.L.O.S.and other tales from the private psychiatric hospital (*average length of stay)is a short, yet eventful journey through the painfully hilarious landscape of the private psychiatric hospital. This collection of true tales exposes the madness of mental health "mangled care", corporate psychiatry and the day to day tribulations of psychiatric patients via the skillful storytelling and humor of teacher and therapist, Dan Shattuck, M.Ed. If you've ever worked in the private psychiatric field, known a patient or been a patient yourself, you won't want to miss this robust approach to "sanity making".
" West Virginia boasts an unusually rich heritage of ghost tales. Originally West Virginians told these hundred stories not for idle amusement but to report supernatural experiences that defied ordinary human explanation. From jealous rivals and ghostly children to murdered kinsmen and omens of death, these tales reflect the inner lives—the hopes, beliefs, and fears—of a people. Like all folklore, these tales reveal much of the history of the region: its isolation and violence, the passions and bloodshed of the Civil War era, the hardships of miners and railroad laborers, and the lingering vitality of Old World traditions.
