Starting work as a probationer or trainee nurse was never easy. For generations of probationers at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, the first day meant stepping into a world of strict rules, heavy workloads, and unfamiliar routines. The CALHN Health Museum’s oral history collection captures these moments, with nurses recalling their first impressions, early mistakes, and […]
For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, nursing was not just a job, it could be a dangerous calling. Hospitals, far from being the clean, clinical environments we know today, were often a hotbed for diseases. Nurses daily treated patients with diseases such tuberculosis, polio, typhus, smallpox, diphtheria and influenza, not to mention […]
Today we honour the memory of sixteen brave nurses. One of the last ships to evacuate Singapore, after it fell to the Japanese in February 1942, was the SS Vyner Brooke. On board were civilians (mainly women and children), the crew, and sixty-five Australian nurses. Sixteen of these nurses trained, worked, or were born in […]