Volunteers versus Professionals: Debates about Nursing during the First World War

The advent of World War I generated an influx of women volunteers, all of whom eager to serve their country and most saw nursing as the most desirable way to serve. These women came from all backgrounds and skillsets; some trained as nurses but the majority untrained. Nursing was undergoing a rapid transition from a traditionally female, informally done vocation to a profession requiring schooling and training at the time of the war, this transitional state of nursing is reflected in the debates about volunteer nurses that erupted during the war.

The Red Cross had established a formal national Nursing Reserve in the years prior to World War I, spearheaded by Miss. Jane Delano. She pooled together a reserve of registered and trained nurses that would be ready to serve with both the Army and the Navy in addition to the Red Cross at home. By the time that war broke out, there were 8,000 nurses enrolled in the national Nursing Service. Yet as the full scale of the war became clearer throughout its trajectory, the military proved more willing to supplement the trained nurses with volunteer aids.  

 In the United States as well as Britain, this willingness gave way to a bitter debate regarding this practice that divided the early nursing communities. Many of the trained, professional nurses expressed frustration at the excess of untrained, upper-class volunteers with little to no skills and experiences that many perceived as threatening to their fledgling profession. At the time of US entry into the war in 1917, Ms. Clara Noye, the director of Red Cross nursing wrote to Adelaide Nutting:

"Tell Anne of Albany [Anne Goodrich] that if I were not convinced before, I should be now that the most vital thing in the life of our profession is the protection of the use of the word ‘nurse.’ Everyone seems to have gone mad. I talk until I am hoarse, dictating letters to doctors and women who want to be Red Cross nurses in a few minutes."

Many trained nursing leaders viewed the addition of aids to supplement trained nurses as a threat to nursing standards, a sentiment not shared by the other side. A fierce debate was ignited between nursing associations in the US, only to be rendered moot by the Armistice.

In Connecticut, Mrs. Keller admitted sadly that the turnout of nurses to the war was not what she had hoped. The difficulties in securing more nurses lay in the lack of qualified instructors to train volunteers and teach a Nursing Course and a First Aid course. Yet, she reported of the 316 women that took the Red Cross’ nursing course and the 1,087 women who took the first aid course by the end of 1917. While not as active as Mrs. Keller hoped, Connecticut, with the aid of training hospitals for nurses such as St. Francis and Hartford Hospital, provided its share of trained nurses supplemented by volunteers.