Nursing and how it has changed since the War

Heroes Remember

Nursing and how it has changed since the War

Transcript

Oh, I adored it. I just adored it. I don't know, you're helping people, and if you have a good sense of humour, you get along with them, you get more out of them. It's, well I would never ever do anything else. I nursed my own mother till she was 108, just a few years ago. My Lord, that's a good healthy run Oh, it's great. I would, now today, this is the old-fashioned nursing, today it's a different story. They know more today, there's more equipment, there's more medicine, there's more everything. But, the nursing care isn't, we were trained in nursing care and we knew quite a lot, but nothing compared to what they have to study today . But they don't get the bedside nursing today like we did. We were interested in the patients as well, you see, and they don't have the chance today. It's not their fault, it's the way it goes. We were at Horley, now just before D-Day, we emptied the hospital except for a couple of wards, so we knew something big was coming up, and a lot of our doctors had gone, and they didn't tell us, and then D-Day, as we say, we were all ready, and we were, I say we were on the direct line from the south coast so all the casualties came in to us and we really went to work. And we weren't there, I can't remember when we, we were, well after D-Day, we must have been there a month and then we were all scooped up and got into battle dress and stuff, went up to Yorkshire to train, so they thought, and they took us out on the parade square a couple of times, which was a dead loss, and we were preparing to go to France.

Description

Mrs. Page talks about her love of nursing, and how much different it is today. She talks about nursing her own mother until her death at 108, and her hospital getting ready for D-Day.

Nancy de Boise Page

Mrs. Page was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. Her father was a doctor and her mother a nurse. Mrs. Page recalls going to the hospital with her father when she was young and knowing early on that nursing was her calling. She trained at the Royal Victoria in Montreal and in 1942 joined the army as a Nursing Sister. She served overseas in England, France and Belgium loving every moment she was able to help the soldiers. Following the war Mrs. Page returned to Queen Mary's Veterans Hospital in Montreal to continue nursing Canadian Veterans.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 02:35
Person Interviewed:: Nancy de Boise Page
War, Conflict or Mission:: Second World War
Location/Theatre:: Northwest Europe
Branch:: Army
Occupation:: Nursing Sister

Language selection

Nursing and how it has changed since the War

Heroes Remember