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During the Korean War (1950-1953) the Norwegian government sent a mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) to support the efforts of the United Nations (UN) Army. From the first, its status was ambiguous. The US-led military medical services believed that the "Norwegian Mobile Army Surgical Hospital" (NORMASH) was no different from any other MASH; but both its originators and its staff regarded it as a vehicle for humanitarian aid. Members of the hospital soon recognized that their status in the war zone was primarily that of a military field hospital. Yet they insisted on providing essential medical care to the local civilian population as well as trauma care to UN soldiers and prisoners of war. The ambiguities that arose from the dual mission of NORMASH are explored in this article, which pays particular attention to the experiences of nurses, as expressed in three types of source: their contemporary letters to their Matron-in-Chief; a report written by one nurse shortly after the war; and a series of oral history interviews conducted approximately 60 years later. The article concludes that the nurses of NORMASH experienced no real role-conflict. They viewed it as natural that they should offer their services to both military and civilian casualties according to need, and they experienced a sense of satisfaction from their work with both types of patient. Ultimately, the experience of Norwegian nurses in Korea illustrates the powerful sense of personal agency that could be experienced by nurses in forward field hospitals, where political decision-making did not impinge too forcefully on their clinical and ethical judgment as clinicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: To describe the life and work of the international nurses of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and to examine their role in relation to their contribution to Spanish nursing in this period. Methods: This historical study is based primarily on the memoirs of the international nurses who joined the war health services of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. The evidence that was elicited from these sources was compared and contrasted with other contemporary documents in order to compare their perspectives with those of other contemporaries. Results: The nurses of the International Brigades joined the front line health services as part of the mobile medical and surgical teams that were attached to the fighting units. They lived and worked under extreme conditions, often under fire. Their work while in Spain was not limited to care delivery but also included managerial and educational aspects. The international nurses' observations of Spanish nursing at the time were not always accurate, which might be explained by a lack of contact with qualified Spanish nursing staff due to a shortage of fully qualified nurses. Conclusion: In the absence of the voices of the Spanish nurses themselves, the written records of the international nurses were invaluable in analyzing Spanish nursing in this period. Their testimonies are, in essence, the international nurses' legacy to the Spanish nurses who stayed behind after the departure of the International Brigadists in 1938. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

by Irvine Loudon. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000. xiv, 236 pp. $116.00 Cdn (cloth). A favoured approach among medical historians at the end of the twentieth century was the study [...]