Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Nursing

Episode Date: November 5, 2015

This week on Sawbones, Sydnee and Justin finally stick it to Joy Behar (just a couple months too late to be relevant) with their brief history of nursing. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Wow! Hello everybody, welcome to Zalboons, Metal Gear, Miscite, D to menace and I am yoko who's Justin McElroy I'm Sydney McElroy. He said how you doing? I'm doing good Justin I've been thinking okay about our show Mm-hmm and I really think that we need to be a little more like topical a little more timely with the stuff that we need to be a little more like topical, a little more timely with the stuff that we discuss. Excellent. That's a great idea, SIX. That's going to help you go viral. Right. Well, that was my thought. It's like a lot more people would listen to it if, you know, if our show was connected to stuff that's going on like right now.

Makes perfect sense to me. I mean, which is hard for a history show, right? Right. The whole essence of our show is that it's already happened. Gosh, this is really, this is a lot deeper of a problem than I had. Let's not get bogged down the details. Do we want to get into that? This is like an existential question, like it's history, but it's now, but it's, could it be topical?

So what is our first, get me in here, said, what's our topical hook this week? Okay, so our trendy, Saban's trendy edition for this week is, did you hear all that stuff that Joy Behar said about nurses? Then I hear all that. On the, on the, on the view? Do you mean, I mean, I don't watch the view,

but I've heard all about it on Facebook. Did you hear about that? Do you mean like six weeks ago? Well, yeah, I mean, it was probably like six weeks ago, but that's like basically now. It's not the grand scheme of things. Yes, okay, yes. I mean, you look at the like history in terms of eons. I'd rather not.

Six weeks ago is the same as like a millisecond ago. It's definitely not though. More or less. I've been really busy. Okay, got it. Okay, good. Now we're getting ready. I work and we have a kid and like it was Halloween like Trick or Treat month. Yeah, I mean, like, celebrate that on the right. I'll write. Like, we put our daughter in, I don't know, 30 different costumes. Okay. So just, this is as timely as I'm gonna get for now, okay?

I'm always gonna be running the least six weeks behind. I can't believe Joy Bayhart said the bad thing about nurses. What did she say? She said a dumb thing about a Miss America contestant who came out and her talent was that she was a nurse and she was proud of it and she talked about being a nurse, which is a pretty awesome talent, frankly, and she was wearing a stethoscope, just all stethoscope because there are just stethoscopes. And I believe that Miss Beihar referred to it as a doctor's death scope. Oh, joy. As opposed to a nursing death scope. Now, of course, as everyone is well aware,

I would think by now, if you didn't already know this, there is no such distinction. They're just like, death of scopes. Yeah. I instrument that we use to ascultate. That means listen, that's a fancy word for listen. Not a listen, guys, come on. That we use, that nurses use, that EMTs use, that. But she said more derogatory things. She didn't just call it a doctor's testoscope, right? No.

She just insinuated, I don't know exactly what she said. Insinuated that she was above her station correct? Yes. Yes, that it wasn't a big deal. I feel bad. I kind of like, obviously, was a stupid thing to say. I feel a little bit bad for Joe Bayhark because like, you're just saying stuff live on TV constantly

if you're like trying to make jokes. Like, that's gotta be hard to not. Like last week or maybe two weeks ago, I made a dumb joke that the punchline was fat people. And that was a mean thing to say and not really in character. But we make the show up as we go and I didn't edit it out. So I, it's hard, but it's still dumb in a second. Yeah, no, I understand what you're saying,

but it's hard for me to, to feel bad for her because nurses work really freaking hard. And they do a lot of work that you don't want to do and that I don't want to do a lot of things That are really hard or really challenging or sometimes frankly kind of gross That is that they have to do that's part of their job and they do it to take care of people So at least if you don't recognize that you should big better targets joy Yeah, and then also Seriously, you don't know I mean like a step stethoscope, I mean, did you know,

I mean, is this silly of me to ask, did you know that there, there is no difference between a stethoscope, stethoscope? Do not attempt to plumb the depths of my insurance on any topic. Fair. Fair. So, I thought we should talk about nurses though. Let's do it. I'm excited. Can you clarify for me like, obviously, I think like a lot of people broadly? I know what it is nurses do like specifically where they fit in in the sort of overall medical landscape but can you like clarify for me? I imagine it's pretty broad answer. That's a tough question answer. What a nurse does do.

What a nurse does not do because when we use the word nurse we're probably referring to everyone within the field of nursing and that's a lot of different levels of training, a lot of different degrees. We're talking about LPNs and we're talking about RNs and then we can be talking about like nurse anesthetists, people who are more specialized who have just certain duties in patient care. There's outpatient nursing is very different from inpatient nursing. I mean, you can hold the same degree and do both, but your day-to-day job and your duties

would be extremely different. In general, you're taking care of patients, you're providing a lot of different, from taking their vitals to listening to their heart and lungs and assessing them to doing neurological assessments to doing them more like hands-on patient care stuff that as a doctor, I don't do a lot of, like cleaning up your patients and bathing your patients

and dressing their wounds, man, wound care is something that doctors never know enough about and nurses know way more. And then things like starting IVs and stuff in the hospital that we don't do and administering medications. But then the nursing field has expanded to include their doctors of nursing.

And there are nurse practitioners, which I think fallen that group. There are nurse midwives. And I'm not going to get into all these different kinds of classifications. I'm just broadly talking about the concept of nursing as men and women who take care of sick people. And how that profession has kind of evolved and some of our missteps along the way trying to develop just like with physicians, we've had many missteps as we have discussed in great depth on the show. Just like that with nursing and the profession of nursing as well. I'm ready to take me back to the beginning. So first of all, thank you to Amanda, Stephanie, Claire, and Nicholas for all suggesting this topic. And I am sure that in the

wake of the Joy Bayhark thing, there were many more people who tweeted at us about this. But that is not as easy to search as emails. So yeah, you want your credit? In me email, because I can't search or Facebook inbox. I can't I can't search or Facebook inbox. I can't, apparently can't search that either. At least not in a way that I have figured out. So the roots of nursing are actually pretty closely tied to two things, one to the church, and then somewhat to the military,

as we move further in history. When we talk about who took care of sick people, especially in ancient times, usually it was family members. So if someone was ill, especially if we're talking about before hospitals, you may have a doctor or someone who was a physician, so to speak, who would come and tell you what medicines to take or something or what pulses to use. But the people who would actually like do the care for the patient would have been family members. A lot of the time that was left to women. So mothers and sisters and daughters.

Although as we began to like see any kind of professional like people who are designated to do that, there is a large chunk of history where it was strictly a male profession just because it was, you know, like naked people. Oh, yeah, well, that makes sense. We had our hang-ups back then. Yeah, so like naked people. And then also because the idea that anybody would have enough knowledge to take care of sick people in any capacity only men would have been thought capable of doing that, whether that been as a doctor or nurse.

Right. So, so there were parts of which is kind of interesting because you see that shift throughout history like with nursing like where it's a mainly female profession and then a male dominated profession and then for many years again a largely female profession and then now whoever, whoever wants to be a nurse. Other than midwifery, which was always kind of generally the realm of women. In ancient Egypt, this was definitely true,

but so mainly men who have been taking care of patients. But nursing had been expanded to include women when we talk about like in Greek times and Roman times. On the battlefield, you would have seen like soldiers acting as nurses for each other. Oh, interesting. They were all skilled in kind of like basic first aid and basic nursing care to like care for one another

and like frontline, you know, medical situations. So some of these are like more like EMT, medic type duties, and some of these are nursing duties as well. But then once the soldiers would have been brought back to hospitals or places to receive further care, then they probably would have been taken over by women primarily. In Roman times, you actually see nursing as a very desirable vocation for noble women. So, that would have been something that you would have had the time to do because you were a noble woman. So, you had the free time to, well, in the time to, for some training, too, I would imagine

it was a luxury that not everybody could afford, right? A lot of this, we're not, when we're talking about training, probably not, probably apprenticeships, and that would be pretty much it. Stuff you would maybe even pick up like hand it down from your family, stuff you would observe, but not as far as like formal training,

like nursing school or anything, no, nothing like that. Definitely not. A lot of, and I mean, to be fair, as far as medical school for doctors, you wouldn't have seen a lot of that either. You know, we're talking about times where a lot of people just kind of apprenticed a physician. Yeah. Same I never heard of.

Yes, sure. You just kind of pick it up. Learn as you go. The profession of nursing becomes more codified as you see Christianity become the predominant religion in Rome because you see this like this idea that more and more people are called to serve their fellow man or woman and care for the sick. And so as a result you see more people who are interested in taking care of people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, who are called to do that as a form of service. So yeah, pick it up.

And we actually see a mention of that. There's a mention of a visiting nurse Phoebe in the Bible. I'm not, I was not aware of Phoebe. I don't mean I don't. It's not like a biblical name, but I'm gonna have to take your word for it. I don't think it's, I don't think she's like a huge figure. And then she call herself Phoebe of the Bible when she introduced herself to potential patients. This is in my nose. Hail, Hail, well met stranger.

I am Phoebe of the Bible. Perhaps you've heard of me. I just invented home nursing. I just wanted to differentiate her from you know like Phoebe of Central Perk. Right okay got it. There are two Phoebe's ever sorry Phoebe case. There's one of the Bible and the one of Friendsvame. Who is cat briefly mentioned in the Bible but they don't linger. Only the part where she wrote smelly cats. Right which was a miracle as we all know. Now, at this time, churches become primarily responsible for furnishing

nurses, for any kind of local villages, you know, to go out and like visit sick people in their homes, as we see the development of some, some, some what we would think of as hospitals for caring for sick people in the hospitals. And again, there's no sort of Training it was as much your your calling to do this to take care of sick people as it would have been your your job and so a lot of these the nurses at the time what we would have called nurses were really more of just like a comforting presence to sit with you while you

died of... Now we understand preventable diseases. I, Grimp, but to try to brighten things up a little bit, you know what, I would bet, this is like completely see to my pants, I would bet that for a good long period of time, you would want a nurse around more than a doctor. Because, probably speaking, a lot of the doctors we encounter are very interested in pushing medicine forward, no matter who sort of like gets burned

for that. And I would think that like, if I had to pick between that or somebody who's just going to like chill and be comforting, like, I think that there's something instinctual about that or something like sort of like that we respond to that goes beyond like just medicine about you know a human presence and a human touch and human compassion that I bet could have a much more profound effect

through a lot of history than what we were thinking of as medicine. I think that's true because you really do. I mean, I will talk about that later, but there really is a shift when you start to see evidence-based medicine become a part of nursing care and nursing education and form of training for nurses. That really takes a while before you see that that is being applied rigorously. And as a result, I think you're right, that there's a lot of history where your doctor

may have done something really painful or terrible to you in the pursuit of like learning from that experience. And your nurse had no, was just not, that was not part of their job to do that. Your nurse would have just been there to help take care of you. Probably would have made you feel a lot better. Most nursing was done by deaconesses. And if you were someone who served as a nurse and you weren't a nun or a monk, then at the time, you generally would have been thought of some thought as someone of like a woman of ill repute somebody who, you know, because mainly it would have been a woman if you weren't a nun or a monk and you were taking care of sick

people. You were probably female, you may have been doing this to make extra money on the side while your main profession of prostitution was how you how you mainly supported yourself. They were actually, there was a point in history where women were punished for prostitution or drunkenness or some sort of behavior like that that was either inappropriate of women or illegal by making them be nurses. There is a USA up-on-line movie in there somewhere, so you just have to find a few rewrites and then you're right there. You don't really see that change until the 1800s. And that's when we first start to see in France and Germany where we start to see some actual training start to happen for nurses.

The Protestant church in Germany, mainly again, nursing was like a religious vocation. You would do it if you were serving the church. But they also started to develop some practical like training programs on that. So like, yes, it's great. You want to take care of people, but then let's talk about how we can do that. Well, science was like in fashion. Oh, it's cool time to be a lot of it. It's science cool now.

It's back and fashion. Yeah, for sure. Hey, way cool. I think it's in fashion again. Yeah. Neil deGress Tyson brought it back. Yeah, he sure. Hey, way cool. I think it's in fashion again. Yeah, Neil deGrasse Tyson brought it back. Yeah, he's back. He brought it back. Thanks, Neil.

So science was very cool at the time. So the idea of formalized training was, was well received because everybody kind of wanted to get in on the science bandwagon. This was greatly advanced by a couple women. One Elizabeth Frye was a nurse who mainly worked for prison reform, but she also helped to organize the de-canesses into training programs. She started the Institute of Nursing in England,

which ultimately I don't know that it was as successful as they wanted it to be, but just began this process. And then of course Florence Nightingale, who I think we've all heard of. Sure, right? She was an assassin's creed syndicate, I just finished. That's exactly why we've all heard of Florence Nightingale, who I think we've all heard of. Sure. Right? She was an assassin's creed syndicate. I just finished.

That's exactly why we've all heard of Florence Nightingale. Right. That's it. So Florence was an upper-class woman who had time, had leisure time, and was called to make nursing, you know, how she spent her time. And so, and this would have been pretty rare because as I mentioned, if you weren't in the church to devote your time to nursing,

was seen as pretty unseemly for a finer lady. Right, again, Florence Nightingale said herself at the time when she started, nursing was left to, and this is a quote from her, those who were too old, too weak, too drunk, and too dirty, too stupid, or too bad to do anything else. A little judgey, a little judgey. She was, there was a hospital official actually at the same time who made the comment that

it present. Nursing is the last resource of female adversity. Slatter-in-lead-atteringly widows run away wives, servants out of place, women bankrupt, famer fortune from whatever calls, fall back on hospital nursing. So this was not, this was, again, nursing was not seen as a great profession and there was no like no formalized training, there was no, you know, so this is the world that Florence Nightingale is entering. And she was one of the figures, and we're going to talk about several more, who helped to change that.

She did a lot to influence modern nursing. She underwent some formal training, some apprenticeship, and she believed really strongly in the idea of public sanitation and clean water and access to clean food and good food and that kind of stuff. And most famously, she tended to the soldiers in the Crimean War helped us supply them with food and water and greatly reduced their mortality as a result. Brought like a brave band of nurses with her to go help soldiers at the front. They didn't cover that in the sentence, agreed.

They probably covered that in a history class, but you probably weren't paying attention because it was about a woman. Oh, man, she got me again. I love everyone in the city's trademark barbs. Thank you, video games, for teaching my husband about women's history. Uh, Anne's hubbent. I listen to this show, too. I listen to half of it.

Uh, that one, one interesting note about Florence Nightgale is that she did a lot of her beliefs, a lot of what she did was actually based on measmathery, which we've talked about before, she believed that disease permeated the air and bad smells and stuff, and that's how you got sick. So a little misled in terms of why she did the thing she did, but a lot of what she did was really practical good advice. And like I said, we're moving into a time where now we see that nursing is a is a more noble Pursuit for all women not just Slatteringly widows whatever that means. All people I would say yes all people at the time This is still mainly a question. Yeah, all people and we're actually starting to to you know formalize nursing education So enough about these Brits said someone was going on state side with nurses

Well, I'm gonna tell you about that Justin But first why don't you come with me to the billing department. Let's go normalizing nursing education. So enough about these Brits said, someone was going on a state side with nurses. Well, I'm gonna tell you about that Justin, but first why don't you come with me to the billing department? Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that ask you let my God before the mouth. All right, Civil War, what do we got?

So if we take nursing state side, because we've mainly been focusing on Europe and the UK and that kind of history of nursing The civil war is really what brought nursing to the forefront Many many women left their families to go volunteer on both sides of the war And actually there's a huge contribution from women who were in slavery at the time as well And again, and I say women because although on the battlefield you would have had men who were caring for each other, you know, and what could have been considered like a nursing capacity,

largely the formalized nurses were women at the time. This is also where have you heard of Clara Barton? Yes, actually I have. Clara Barton, what do I know that name? Well, I mean, you could take a stab and say she was a nurse and you'd probably be doing it. Wasn't she a nurse? A famous nurse? The famous nurse. They talk about her own west wing.

I feel like they met her in a mission in a west wing. Yeah, great. Yes, I'm sure they mentioned her own west wing. Or as she wasn't in the sasin's creed, so I'm not sure. OK, well, maybe they'll make a video game about her someday and you'll know who she is. Claire Barton was an important figure during the Civil War, certainly caring for the wounded on the battlefield,

caring for the sick, but as she herself admitted, she didn't do as much hands-on. She made her mark by traveling to Europe and learning about the international Red Cross, and then bringing that idea back to the US and starting the US branch of the Red Cross. Oh, right, that's where I know from. We also hear of Dorothy Adix at this time, and then bringing that idea back to the US and starting the US branch of the Red Cross. Right, that's where I know from.

We also hear of Dorothy Adix at this time who was a nurse who made her job, made her business to organize all of the nurses into more of a formalized group who could take care of patients in hospitals and at the front. And this was a big deal. Any woman who was willing to do this would have been a really hospitals and at the front. And this was a big deal. Any woman who was willing to do this would have been a really big deal at the time because

especially in the south, the idea of a finer lady with her skirts and her flounces and ribbons and all that of treading into a hospital. Her curtsy-ing. Yes, and her swimming and her fans. And her corseting. Her uses were lumbarla. Exactly. The idea of a woman doing that and going into a hospital where there are sick people and naked people and bleeding people and you know all kinds of bodily fluids and taking care of men would not have been okay. And so the women who did this were really revolutionary. During the war, it's funny only what they called older women were allowed to be nurses. And older means

30 plus. Yeah, well, comparatively speaking, those times, yes. Thanks. I'm an older woman. Me too. And so it actually led to a trend of many women trying to pretend to be older than they were. Oh, wow. So that they could get into the nursing field because they wanted to go take care of people too. But that was so that younger women weren't exposed to the horrors of war. And because they would also be, I don't know, tempting for men or, I don't know, something sexist and awful, I'm sure. I don't know. Something sexist and awful, I'm sure. They were forced to dress as kind of,

I don't know, as not distracted. Conservatively? Yeah, conservatively, a big word. So they had to remove the hoops from their skirts. They had to only wear brown or black. Because you know men can't pay attention if a lady's got some hoops. They also, it was very practical. The hallways in the like between the beds were very narrow and so the hoop skirts would get stuck on stuff. There was a story I read of like a hoop skirt getting stuck on a patient and ripping out a stitch and like they blood to death or something. That can't, I can't imagine. That's true. Man. Yeah, thank you. Mary Bickerdijk is another big figure at this time. She was a huge leader in the nursing field. She was one of, she was the only woman that General Sherman allowed at the front with him. How did she swing that?

She was just that good. Nice. She had no commission like Barton and she said, I have received my authority from Lord God Almighty. And she charged to the front. She was the only nurse at the Battle of Lookout Mountain cared for 2,000 men. That makes for a long day. Yeah. And on the Confederate side, you actually have a nurse Phoebe Pember, who up to, at one point was caring for up to 15,000 patients at a time.

Not well. One was there. Well, she had a whole team. OK, got it. Justin. How are you? Good, cool. Next. You know what? Maybe she could have whole team. Okay, got it. Justin. How are you? Good, cool.

Next. You know what? Maybe she could have. Maybe. I guess. No. This is a lot of people. Like, that's a grip of people.

Like, there's a lot. I'm all for impresses. This is just three or that's an insane number of people. She had a whole team of nurses that were working with her. She's like, you work it. That's like a bunch of you concert on her own. That's insane. Even bunch of you as one of us is in that a bit. And there's actually, there's a lot bunch of be concert on our own, as insane. Even bunch of you guys might have seen that a bit.

And there's actually, there's a lot that can be said. And I'm not, I'm giving you a very general overview of these time periods in history, but there's a lot that you can read and learn about the contributions during the Civil War of African-American women who worked as nurses and who contributed some who were in slavery and then some who weren't on both sides

of the war, huge numbers who took care of wounded men during the war. In the later 1800s and into the 20th century, we start to see now that we kind of have organizations of nurses and it is now socially acceptable for you to be a nurse and not necessarily be a nun. We start to see the expansion of like nursing school and like what are nursing duties? What does a nurse do? You know, how can they specialize? But it's funny, you still see like the older underpinnings of this is like a church,

kind of profession as this of like nuns Still persist For one in one way that nursing is largely a female occupation at this Pointing history, but we also see these weird guidelines for nurses that have nothing to do with their like duties or their profession, okay, so like for instance Nurses were not allowed to marry in a lot of cases. Yeah, it's alright. They were kind of housed in these nurses homes And I found this great there. There's this list of duties of the floor nurse from 1887 And this these were some of their duties that were that were listed for them to take care of so in addition to caring for your 50 Zero patients or 15,000 if you're crushing it like

Phoebe Pember history's third great Phoebe. Yeah, she's snuck in there. It's a very feeble episode. So duties of the foreigners. So there were a lot of menial tasks involved in nursing at the time. So like sweeping and mopping the floors and dusting the patient's furniture, you have to maintain the temperature in the ward. So like bring coal and, you know, like to the fire.

Invent air conditioning. Exactly. You need to fill all the carousine lamps and clean the chimneys. You've got to keep all your nursing notes. You have to whittle your nibs to your individual taste. What's that mean? For your pens?

What? For your pens nibs? Oh, got it. You reported it. Little personality, a little bit of flair. How you whittle your nibs. That's exactly where you can exert you in your day. That's it though.

That's a great nib, Doris. I know. It's a nice, Got a little round of the edge on there, don't I? This would have been from the US. They immigrated, Sydney. That was legal back then. Or is this not the Great American Mildred Milk Pot? No, it is. I jacked.

Your day would have started at 7 a.m. and it would have ended at 8 p.m. I can't do a woman's voice that isn't going to sound like I'm making fun of women. So like any voice that, like, is like woman face, basically. And I can't do that. So I do a British woman. So that way it doesn't sound like I'm doing a goofy woman's voice. Why don't you just talk like you?

Because this is how I... In this example, I am being a woman. All great comedy set. I was beginning with for the next 10 seconds, I will be talking, imagine I'm talking like a woman. I said that there is no distinct way that women talk. I don't want you to think that I'm saying that there is. I just mean that in this moment,

right, I'm with you. Because at the time, only women would have been allowed to be nurses. Got it. But only then So you would have worked from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. except on the Sabbath day On which day they would give you off from noon to 2 presumably to go to church. Right. I mean You were if you were a graduate nurse in good standing you would have been given an evening off a week But only if you

go to church regularly. You were instructed to set aside a lot of your money to take care of you in your later years, like as your own social security. So like, for example, if you made 30 bucks a month, which would have been normal at the time, you should set aside 15 of it. You're going to be living high on the hog. Was you right in your old age, huh? Any nurse who smokes, uses liquor in any form, gets her hair done at a beauty shop or

frequent stance halls, will give the director a nurse's good reason to suspect her worth, intentions and integrity. It's a nice back door to just like, if we think that you're out of line, we're gonna rain you back in. And if you do all these things that we told you to do without're out of line, we're gonna rain you back in. And if you do all these things that we told you to do without fault for five years, we will give you an increase of five cents a day, providing that you don't have any debts to the hospital.

Whoa, I can buy a new dress for church. So the nurses would actually spend a lot of their time. I mean, you can read these great experts from like nursing diaries from the time period, but they would spend like, especially as they were like student nurses, they didn't get paid, and they had to spend all their time like cleaning. Really long, thankless hours to then graduate to long hours of just really demanding patient care, because you know, we're talking about a time, we rely so much now on monitors and like labs and all kinds of studies that we can do in the

hospital to tell us instantly if a patient needs our attention or if they're stable and they can sleep and we can sit down and have a cup of coffee. And they wouldn't have had any of this at the time. And then the doctors would have just given them a list like change that patient's bandage every two hours and reapply that poultice every four hours. Go check, go make sure Timmy's drinking his water and like, and we'll just give you this. We'll take off.

Way, way the air, evil spirits with burning sage. Yeah. And make sure that you refill the, you know, the kerosene lamps while you're at it. I wonder if that's because I wonder if there was a high demand to be in this field because there were so few socially acceptable career paths for women at the time. Like if you wanted to be a working woman,

you didn't have a lot of options. So, like, they could afford to be, like, really demanding about further nurses. I think that was probably- Pull that out of my caboose. I think- I think- I say that that was probably part of it at the time,

based on the idea that as we move into, like, through World War I, and then definitely after World War II, we see lots of women who are interested in becoming nurses. We see that as like a booming profession and lots more people entering that field. So I imagine that women who wanted to work at the time, yeah, for sure, it was a desirable job.

But I mean, I think part of it is still the relationship to the church and the under, you know, the underlying theme of like this used to be a job you had if you were a nun, now you're not a nun, but you kind of live like a nun. It's still like more than a job. It's a calling out. It's a calling out.

And that's actually why nurses at the time would have been called sisters and my understanding is that in the UK some senior nurses are still referred to as sister. So sister, whoever, which is interesting. And also the connection to the military is probably why we give orders. That's why I write orders. Oh, yeah. It's interesting, which is interesting. But one little tidbit that really brought nursing into it's own that I thought was kind of cool is that as nursing school's developed, as we started to see, you know, more and more,

nurses would actually go through training before they would go through these rigorous kind of apprenticeships I just described. You would, the school you would graduate from had a specific cap, like a different like color on the cap that would indicate what school you graduated from and you would wear it throughout your career. So it became like a point of pride. You wanted a good reputation, you wanted your students to be well trained and the nurses that you sent out into the world to be really good at what they did because they were wearing your colors all the time. So nursing schools got better, you know, as a way of making sure that they increase their reputation. And

so that's when they really, you know, we start to see like evidence-based nursing and like what actually does better for patients and let's apply like good medical theory to the care of our patients on all levels. And I mean, and doctors are getting better at this point too. We're out of the heroic air of medicine and moving into like, no, let's actually do stuff that helps people and not just what we think, what wild idea floats into our brains.

And then like I said, after, especially after World War II, when we see like, nursing is now this respectable profession, and it is also something that is your patriotic duty. So we see tons of women and now men signing up to goby nurses. That was like the hugeest percentage of what profession volunteered for the war, more nurses, to go take care of our soldiers. And they brought back with them all of this new skills

and all this training, all these things they learned at the front. And this greatly improved like modern hospitals and emergency rooms and like EMT care and ambulances and all that kind of stuff, like what we learned at the front. War, what can you do? That was not my plug for war. Thanks again, war. War what can you do? That was not my plug for war Thanks, well thanks again war it's unfortunate, but you could make that you could make that case in general about times of war when

And what what they do for women back at home who are all the sudden allowed to take on all these roles that men stopped us from taking on before or is good for two groups of people The pushing for the medical field and rat bot before. Or is good for two groups of people. The pushing for the medical field and rep butler. This is the two people for him more as a kid. It has, I won't say war. I will say the military has done huge things for the advancement of the medical field.

And also I would say women in the medical field, you know, and especially in this case, we're talking about nurses. But that could be a whole other show, so we're not gonna get into that right now. Now, of course, like I said, nursing education is clearly formalized. You gotta go to school to be a nurse. You can't just like,

show up. You know, call yourself sister and say you're a nurse. There are all different kinds of specializations and different kinds of duties. Like I said, I don't think a good question is not, what does a nurse do, it's what does a nurse not do. And personally, I will say this, as when I was first in intern, you know,

after I finished medical school and I started my residency, that first day out, you know, it's really terrifying because you're tasked with taking care of all these patients and you, you know, it's really terrifying because you're tasked with taking care of all these patients and you, you know, sort of what you're doing. You know what you're doing in theory, but in practice, you haven't done it yet, right? This is our regular summons reminder to not go to the hospital in July. She lies in the new doctor's start.

I'm going to July. And nurses have to deal with this, especially in the hospital setting, with, you know, calling and telling the doctor, hey, this thing is going on with this patient. And the nurse who's calling you already knows exactly what needs to happen. And you don't. And so I always tell our interns, like, a great question is, hey, so what do we normally do in this situation? What would you say we normally do? And I mean, of course, you want to read, and you want to learn, and you want to know how to do things for yourself.

But the nurses are a huge resource. And I personally could not survive without, you know, the nurses that have helped train me and who work with me now. And I think... And you're Nurse Jackie? My Nurse Jackie. My personal, yes, my personal nurse is is Jackie and I could not survive without Jackie. But I think it's important to know this and this is my last thing I'll say.

I think some people get the idea that there's like a hierarchy in medicine. Like that doctors, first of all, that you think doctors are at the top of that and that is crazy. No way. We are not at the top of any wrong. We just, we don't have that much power. But we're not, we're a team. We work with nurses. Nurses don't work for us.

I am not Jackie's boss. Jackie and I work together to take care of people. And I think that's really important for you to know as patients interacting with us, is that we're a team. And there are lots of stuff nurses can do that I can't. And thank God for them. Thanks so much to the Maximum Fun Network for having us on. We've got a ton of great shows.

One new one's called Can I Pitch Dog. It's a show for dog lovers. My brother Travis produces that and occasionally talks on it. And their first episode had Lynn Arfrang, Lynn Manuel Miranda, I'm talking about his dog, and it's a fun show. If you like dogs, especially, I think you should check it out. You head on to iTunes, you're at maximumfun.org. Thanks to the Taxpayers for letting us use their song

Medicines is the intro and outro of our program. If you search for the Taxpayers on Twitter or you buy their stuff, I think it's a band camp, I think SoundCloud, you camp, I think soundcloud. You just search for the taxpayers and give them all of your money. Not all of it. Come on, you got a paper ant fella. And I think that's going to do for us. We also got a great present.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we did. We got... We got these three awesome books that I want to say thank you for. We got a non-uclidean geometry for babies and what were our other two ones. Quantum physics. Quantum physics for babies. Newtonian physics for babies. Very cute from Adrian. We really appreciate it. Yeah and we love them. I actually like I got a little choked up. I don't know there was something about it and like the idea of math out there waiting for Charlie in the future. So thanks. Anyway, I love them.

Agents sent that to PO Box 54. I need to watch Virginia 2.5. So we want to send to something. Don't feel like you have to and I don't feel like I've spent money on us, but if you I send a postcard or a note or anything, feel free. Absolutely, because I really do, I kind of get, I kind of cry. It's kind of sweet. Yeah, people admitted Charlie stuff, like when he was right from any who, we're like way off the top, I can go away long. So, oh, oh, oh, real quick.

December 21st, 2015. Honey, what's Virginia? Canal Nights. Do there. Two, is that right? Canal Nights, two. It is a lot. It is a family podcast.

Extravaganza. Well, we're actually calling it a hoot nanny this year. Oh. It's a family comedy podcast. I'm sorry, I wasn't let in on this. Bring your family, bring your friends, bring everybody. Bring your enemies. Bring your enemies.

It doesn't matter. Go to bit.ly for its lash. Candle lights too. December 21st, 8pm, Hanaton. It's had a new venue. If you saw us last year, we're at a new place. So the sound issues will be fixed. Tickets are like 20 bucks. They're not bad at all. And we'd love to see you. So bit.ly4dslashcandlemites2. That's us, Emma, brother and my brother and me, performing on one stage. Not some holiday hootin' Annie. A holiday hootin' Annie. Anyway, that's going to do it for first folks. Thank you so much. Until the next time, we'll get a chance to talk with you. I'm a brother and my brother and me, performing on one stage. Not something. Holiday Hootin' Annie. A holiday Hootin' Annie. Anyway, that's gonna do it for folks.

Thank you so much. Until the next time, we get a chance to talk with you. I'm Justin McElroy. I'm Sydney McElroy. And as always, don't drown. Hold in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone

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