Читать книгу Kelly Vana's Nursing Leadership and Management - Группа авторов - Страница 175

Adah Belle Thoms graduated from the Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing in 1905, a New York City school only for Black students, although under White administration. During the First World War, nurses volunteering for war service joined the American Red Cross but Black nurses were rarely accepted. Only during the last month of the war, in the fall of 1918, were 24 Black nurses called up. Meanwhile, 22,000 White nurses had been accepted. Seeing the futility of trying to volunteer, Thoms set up an organization of Black nurses called the Blue Circle Nurses, which was associated with the recently founded Circle for Negro War Relief. These nurses functioned as public health nurses for needy Black families. In 1929, Thoms was appointed the first Black Assistant Superintendent of Nurses at Lincoln Hospital. That same year, Thoms' book, Pathfinders, the first account of prominent Black nurses, was published (Clark Hine, 1989).

Consider why Black patients, nurses, medical, and ancillary staff needed Black hospitals during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Thoms was a remarkable early nurse leader, as evidenced by her organization of the Blue Circle Nurses, her administrative work, and her book, all accomplished within the context of rampant racism. Can you identify some leadership qualities she might have possessed to support her in accomplishing all this?