The hospitals would use the student nurses as their main employees so that they wouldn’t have to pay them. When they graduated, they have to find work with private clients and that isn’t stable. The patients might pass away or the family might not have enough money to pay the nurses because of the Great Depression in the 1930s. They also might not get enough hours. For me, I work as a Home Health Aide, and most of the time I wouldn’t get enough hours. They would give me many clients with only two to four hours. The clients usually get one month of care if they were just released from the hospital from a stroke or some other health problems. I also get hospice clients and they would last longer depending how much time they have left. The hospice cases were very emotional. Family members and friends would cry and it’s really hard to see someone pass away when I have taken care of them.
Nursing was also segregated from the blacks. Only during World War II, they were able to serve in the army and the navy. It is hard to believe that they would have a draft for the nurses and not let the black nurses serve in the army or the navy. The nurses were paid poorly for a long time. The early public images of nurses were ridiculed by the media. People saw from the media that nurses were unintelligent, unprofessional, and is just looking to marry a rich doctor. They were also treated as 2nd rated in the