MARY EUGENIE HIBBARD: NURSE, GENTLEWOMAN AND PATRIOT (HIBBARD MARY EUGENIE).
Contributors: University of Texas at Austin.
Published: 1990
Number of pages: 340
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Women's Studies.; History, United States.; Biography.
Description: The purpose of conducting this research was to investigate the life and works of Mary Eugenie Hibbard during the years from 1886-1907. The result was an historical biography that recognized her contributions to nursing and to international health within the context of the social forces affecting nursing and women at that time.

Miss Hibbard was a noted leader in nursing from before the Spanish-American War until her retirement in 1927. Her list of international achievements include: Early member of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools; Superintending Sister on the Hospital Ship Main off the coast of Africa during the Boer War; work as both a head nurse and in the Surgeon General's office during the Spanish-American War; organization of Schools of Nursing in Cuba after the Spanish-American War; organization of nursing services during the digging of the Panama Canal; Inspectress General of the Island of Cuba; Head of the Department of Nursing Tuberculosis Section, Havana, Cuba and finally she served as Chief of the Bureau of Nurses of the Republic of Cuba for the last eight years of her career. Despite Miss Hibbard's past attainments her name and her works are virtually unknown in nursing today.

Her accomplishments at the Grace Hospital include outdistancing others in the early recognition of the value of male students in nursing, abolishing payments to pupils, requiring a high school diploma for admission, exams for graduation and the elimination of the practice of having students do private duty.

Two of the important standards set by Hibbard in Cuba were the requirement of a diploma to work as a nurse and the institution of an eight hour day. An eight hour work day was a truly revolutionary concept, not just for nursing but for all of labor in the early 1900s. Yet, Miss Hibbard was able to institute this as the standard for American nurses in Panama. She recognized that attractive working conditions would be needed to draw nurses to a place so far from home. She was able to use her personal and political power to ensure that such conditions prevailed.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-01, Section: B, page: 0160.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN, 1990.

School code: 0227.