Tales from Kentucky Nurses

Tales from Kentucky Nurses PDF

Author: William Lynwood Montell

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2015-02-20

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0813160723

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Tales from Kentucky Nurses

Tales from Kentucky Nurses PDF

Author: William Lynwood Montell

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2015-02-20

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0813160731

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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. Noted 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. Covering medical practice in the state from the early twentieth century through contemporary times, the episodes related in Tales from Kentucky Nurses reveal the significance of the nursing profession to the Bluegrass state's local life and culture. They include funny tales -- such as the story of an injured stripper who swore her pole had been sabotaged and an anecdote about a surgeon racing between hospitals who paid his speeding ticket twice, knowing he would have to hurry the other way in a few hours. Montell also presents moving stories like the recollections of a nurse who helped a frail cancer patient achieve his last wish of being baptized. This valuable collection also 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 fondly 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.

Tales from Kentucky Doctors

Tales from Kentucky Doctors PDF

Author: William Lynwood Montell

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2008-03-14

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 081317290X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Rooted in the Mountains, Reaching to the World

Rooted in the Mountains, Reaching to the World PDF

Author: Anne Z. Cockerham

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9781935497523

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

When she wrote her autobiography, Wide Neighborhoods, in 1952, Mary Breckinridge reflected on what her beloved Frontier Nursing Service had achieved since its founding in 1925. She compared FNS to a tree, a metaphor that aptly described the service's steadfast and powerful roots in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, as well as the plentiful yield of healthy babies delivered by the Frontier nurses. Breckinridge was equally proud of another of the Frontier Nursing Service's products: the hundreds of graduates of the Frontier Graduate School of Midwifery (later called the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing and today known as Frontier Nursing University). Through their subsequent work in the United States and around the world, Frontier alumni constitute a significant portion of the Frontier legacy. Indeed, through their care of thousands of women, babies, and families, the graduates have provided "shade and fruit" to many. The stories and experiences of the early Frontier graduates -- those who attended the School in its first 50 years -- provide a fascinating glimpse into a part of nurse-midwifery history that has heretofore not been given significant attention, and therefore is the purpose of this book.

If You Don't Laugh You'll Cry

If You Don't Laugh You'll Cry PDF

Author: Claire Schmidt

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres

Published: 2017-07-25

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0299313506

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Wide Neighborhoods

Wide Neighborhoods PDF

Author: Mary Breckinridge

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-05-14

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 0813181232

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Wide Neighborhoods is the autobiography of Mary Breckinridge, the remarkable founder of the Frontier Nursing Service. It is equally the story of the unique organization she founded in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky in 1925—the Frontier Nursing Service. Riding out on horseback, the FNS nurse-midwives, the first of their profession in this country, proved that high mortality rates and malnutrition need not be the norm in remote rural areas. The FNS, through its example and through the graduates of tis school of midwifery and family nursing, has exerted a lasting influence on family health care throughout the world.

Mary On Horseback

Mary On Horseback PDF

Author: Rosemary Wells

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2000-10-23

Total Pages: 66

ISBN-13: 014130815X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Master storyteller Rosemary Wells tells the incredible true story of a World War I nurse who brought medical care to the Appalachians Mary Breckinridge, trained as a nurse during World War I, rode on horseback into the isolated mountains of Appalachia and never looked back. Instead, she spent her life fording icy streams and climbing untracked mountains to bring medical help to those in need. More nurses on horseback joined Mary . . . and the Frontier Nursing Service was born. Mary’s story is amazing. And it is true. “Wells’s realistic yet poetic prose perfectly captures the dichotomy of the majestic beauty of Appalachia and the harsh realities of mountain life. . . . This one’s a gem.”—School Library Journal

An Academic Nurse’s Tale

An Academic Nurse’s Tale PDF

Author: Pamela J. Brink RN PhD FAAN

Publisher: Archway Publishing

Published: 2021-10-01

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 166570909X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

A Great Heart

A Great Heart PDF

Author: Shirley Noe Swiesz

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2015-02-28

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1491753269

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Survival was their dearest hope...these mountain people. Their children were their greatest asset...but they died one by one, long before they reached the age of six, many times at birth along with their mother. When a mother died in childbirth the family was usually broken into tiny pieces...but Mary Breckenridge changed all that with her midwives and nurses. They rode their horses in the middle of the night, in the coldest of winter, to save a mother and her child...but they did more than that...they treated gunshot wounds, snake bites, gave shots, but most of all they gave hope to this mountain community where few had cared until this great woman came into their midst. Mary Breckenridge had vowed never to love again, but she fell in love with these mountain people and served them well...with the courage of Job, she began to live again...a different life, but a full one, and she took an entire mountain of people with her on this journey, along with her nurses and midwives. This is the story that might have been her own.