Navy Nurses Roles

Throughout history, women were always treated unequal to men. Today, women are still continued to be held unequal to men. The founding of the Navy Nurse Corps did not happen until a hundred years later when the United States Navy Department was established in 1789. Although the Navy Nurse Corps was not founded until 1908, women served as nurses away on Navy ships and hospitals. The Surgeon General of the Navy, Rear Admiral Rixey was a strong supporter of the founding of the Navy Nurse Corps. He appealed to the congress for an establishment of a female Navy Nurse Corp due to his belief that women of the Navy hospitals would better aid them than male nurses alone. On May 13, 1908 he United States Navy Nurse Corps was eventually signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt. It was then female nurses of the Navy would prove their utmost value for World War One.
The first Navy Nurse Corp consisted of twenty elite and well qualified women. They were later known as the Sacred Twenty. These nurses location of duty was at the Navy Medical School Hospital in Washington, D.C. The leader of this group was Esther Voorhees Hasson. She became the first superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps due to her ample experiences as a civil and military nurse. Esther graduated from the Connecticut Training School for Nurses in New Haven. Long before the …show more content…
One of the first Medical facilities such Naval Hospitals Annapolis, Md.Brooklyn, N.Y., and Mare Island, Calif. acquired Naval Nurses. In the year of 1910, the Navy Nurses were assigned their first overseas assignment to the Naval hospital at Canacao in the Philippine Islands. The Navy Nurses also served on board ships such as the USS Mayflower and the USS Dolphin. Navy Nurses also were sent to new duty stations in other countries such as Guam and Tutuila. During their overseas assignments, their duty was to educate native women and build