Pigeonholing

Heroes Remember

Pigeonholing

Transcript

You know you learn over a period of time to pigeon hole things and you might go through a pretty shattering experience. We were once shelled, the windows all blown in and here we had these all bits so we got blankets up, blocked them, black out, it was at night, and I just gave one of the orderlies a syringe with morphine and I took morphine and we gave each one half a cc of morphine just to calm them down because they couldn't move. But you didn't, afterwards it sort of came to you of what nearly happened but then you don't think of those things at the time. Then after it's all over, well that's that, it's passed. And when they came in in tanks and they were burnt black , you know, but you remained, you had to remain cheerful, you had to remain as though everything was going to be alright. And that was our training at the hospital as students we had to pigeonhole our activities. What you did off duty was entirely separate, you didn't take your work with you and that I think was good training.

Description

Ms. Drean describes how she had been taught a technique at nursing school to deal with the stresses of nursing, called pigeonholing. This technique taught her to compartmentalize her thoughts so that she could forget the stresses of nursing while on her free time.

Jean Drean

Jean Drean was born in 1916 in Vancouver, British Columbia. She was the second of three children, all of whom were home-schooled. Ms. Drean studied nursing at St. Joseph's Hospital in Victoria, British Columbia, graduating in 1940. She enlisted in January, 1941 with #16 Canadian General Hospital and went overseas in June, 1942. In England, Ms. Drean served at #15 and #16 Canadian Field Hospitals. In France, she worked in a field surgical unit at a former German hospital in Saint-Omer, treating friend and foe with equal empathy. Lastly, as part of the Army of Occupation, Ms. Drean treated Russian and Polish POWs at a field hospital in Sogol, Germany.

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