Flying Nurses
Item
FROM an isolated town in the desert comes an emergency call to the metropolitan airport. A woman has been critically injured, and she must be rushed by plane to the city hospital. The airport officials relay the message to the local office of the Aerial Nurse Corps of America. A quick check of the registered nurses locates a girl available, and in a few minutes she reports at the field with her special kit. These nurses of the sky, specially trained for aerial emergency duties, have just formed a national organization to fill the need for attendants for flying ambulances and for disaster service.Specially constructed air ambulances are few, so the Aerial Nurse must adapt the ship to the patient and sickness for which she must care. A heart case, for instance, usually requires that a patient sit up. Administration of oxygen may be necessary. If the patient must lie flat, the Aerial Nurse must make sure there is room for the stretcher. Can the seats be removed? Is the door narrow? The nurse must have many hours of flying ambulance experience to her credit and be able to deal with the situation quickly. Each nurse carries a kit for emergency disaster relief and the care of patients during flight. Besides oxygen masks and tanks, the kits contain many pieces of special apparatus. One of these is an “information bomb.” The purpose of this packet is to provide persons stranded in isolated districts with a means of signaling their needs to the plane overhead. The package contains strips of white cloth with which to form letters on the ground, giving information according to a code contained in the packet. A letter “A” laid out on the ground means “First aid kits only needed.” A letter “H” signifies “Doctors and nurses needed urgently,” while “T” means “Water needed.” The code, although extremely simple, allows people on the ground to send messages of almost any type. Another important item in the Aerial Nurse’s kit is restraining straps, in case mental disease or sudden panic should cause the patient to attack nurse or pilot. Many of the Aerial Nurses are licensed radio operators, able to take over communications, to give vital reports while a plane is in flight. Plans are now under way to organize a group of women pilots who will stand ready to fly planes of mercy and maintain a courier service in times of disaster. Creation of the Aerial Nurse Corps was the idea of Lauretta M. Schimmoler, who is herself a pilot, having studied airplane manufacturing at the Lockheed plant, worked for the weather bureau, flown her own plane for years, built and managed an airport.
- Title (Dublin Core)
- Flying Nurses
- Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
- Flying Nurses
- Language (Dublin Core)
- eng
- Temporal Coverage (Dublin Core)
- World War II
- Date Issued (Dublin Core)
- 1940-10
- Is Part Of (Dublin Core)
-
Popular Mechanics, v. 74, n. 4, 1940
- pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
- 494-495
- Rights (Dublin Core)
- Public Domain (Google digitized)
- Source (Dublin Core)
- Google books
- Archived by (Dublin Core)
- Enrico Saonara
- Alberto Bordignon (Supervisor)
- Spatial Coverage (Dublin Core)
- United States of America
