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A historical view of the army nurse profession.
PAVLÍKOVÁ, Andrea
The thesis deals with the profession of a military nurse. We can assert that the official study of military, non-medical health-care related qualifications and its use in practice not only for military purposes dates back to the fifties of the last century. However, women as health care professionals, consequently in uniforms, have always been an actual issue. The development of health care activities always existed, however, we must not neglect influence of scientific and medical findings. The historical timeline of development of medical care in the battle field was recorded and ranges from pre-historical healing. The way of Christian medicine was negatively influenced by the Catholic Church. The dark period of the Middle Ages had actually wrested medical performance from the hands of specialists and the suffering were left to the "tender" mercies of the priests. The following part of the thesis concerns modern medicine where enlightenment reforms were exercised. Some of the original six-month courses for military surgeons were organised in this period of time; they weretransformed into Military Surgical Academy, out of which the famous Josefinum originated. A expression of humanity which supported a form of health care of war veterans was demonstrated by constructing buildings for invalid people. The second half of the nineteenth century is characterized by the phenomenon of the presence of nuns in military hospitals. This study goes further in depth of professionally organized healthcare right in the battle field, which dates back from the era of wars in the Crimea.This stage describes the transformation of caring into nursing which requires the necessity of specialized preparation of persons providing nursing practice. In addition, Henry Dunant engraved himself into the history of the profession of a nurse, as the founder of the Red Cross, who first trained health care professionals for working within armed intentions of the state. The continuation of this action sketches out the process of providing first aid in principal armed conflicts of the twentieth century. It describes the functioning of commander operated military health service of that time. WWI drove Czech medical staff to both sides of the front where they provided medical help to the injured. Nurses of the WWII already performed their duties in uniforms as the rightful members of the army. The thesis also mentions post-war usage of military health care professionals in secret foreign missions and their specialized erudition.Last but not least, it marginally discusses contemporary possibilities of modern health care service of the Army of the Czech Republic. The goal of the endeavours of writing this thesis was to chart out clearly the development of the profession of a military nurse within the historical context, focusing mainly on women coming from Czech regions. In order to make the history background concerning specific female participants of the world war conflicts understandable to the reader, this paper reports, in broader extension, peculiar medical and nursing findings, already from the era of prehistoric civilisations. The history study method were applied for the purpose of the theoretical thesis. The methodology is based on searching, studying, sorting and the consecutive systematic objective describing of the events from the past times with the intention to propose comprehensive report on the subject given. It was necessary to study inexhaustible amount of sources to obtain awareness of historical connections. Factual information was derived by analysing of primary and mainly secondary documents. The thesis sketches out histories of military health care and the profession of a military health care professional stemmed from the exploration of appropriate written sources and conclusion of the basic findings. The intentions of the work are not only to clarify the past but also to contribute to solutions of every-day issues.
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