Welcome
Military nursing during war has been a catalyst across many decades for developments in nursing practice and changes in nurse training. This site is about Australian trained nurses who served mainly in the defence forces but often with civilian organisations during times of peril.
As a military and nursing historian, it is the outcome of more than 20 years of research on nurses and as such, all database information on this website is copyright to me and the intellectual property remains mine.
At present it focuses mainly on nurses who served in WW1 and WW2. It is designed to be a reference site and resource for those looking for information on the women who served their country and their allies in the time of war. It also has the names of members of the Australian Army Nursing Service, RAAF Nursing Service and RAN Nursing Service.
A trained nurse in this context is usually a female who trained at a registered hospital for either three or four years. They also had registration with an authority in a state. In 1914, this was either the Australasian Trained Nurses’ Association, the Royal Victorian Trained Nurses’ Association, the Royal British Nursing Association (for nurses in South Australia) or the Queensland Nurses’ Registration Board.
By the time of WW2, registration was state based.
An Australian nurse could have been born in Australia, trained in Australia or enlisted in an Australian organisation.
Acknowledgements: I wish to acknowledge the assistance of Heather (Frev) Ford and Faithe Jones in the compilation of the WW1 database, and Wendy Taylor for WW2.