A Nurse's Intuition

Heroes Remember

A Nurse's Intuition

Transcript

And I once got in a young man, he was asleep when he came and I just put him on the bed and he slept and he couldn't wake up, ya know you couldn't. So I opened, they had a little case just like a little waterproof thing right here with their details and all their stuff in it, and I took it and opened and it said that he was mental, ya know, that he a, and I recognized the psychiatrist because I had him with me in England in the hospital. This isn't a psychiatric case at all. He muttered and muttered about wounded soldiers and carrying them off the field so I knew darn well he must have been a stretcher bearer so when he came to he told me he was a stretcher bearer and so I just took his card and wrote on it, "This man's a stretcher bearer," and he did nothing but sleep here and I didn't want them to put, classify him for as a psychiatric case so I did my writing and I never heard anything about that.

Description

Ms. Carter describes treating a patient who wouldn't wake who had been diagnosed as a psychiatric case. Ms. Carter realizes that the soldier, a stretcher bearer, is suffering from extreme exhaustion, and refutes the earlier diagnosis.

Doris Carter

Doris Carter was born in Birkenhead, England on June 9, 1910. Her family emigrated to Woodstock, New Brunswick and in 1932 she enrolled in Nursing at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. Ms. Carter graduated in 1935, and was recruited to a wartime surgical team, prior to the war's onset. On November 30, 1940 she went overseas with #1 Military Hospital to nurse civilians injured in the bombings of Coventry and Birmingham. Ms. Carter was then sent to the Mediterranean with #5 Military Hospital. She served in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Northwestern Europe. After the war, Ms. Carter pursued a career in Public Health Nursing.

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