Graduate e-cohort update:

It has been just over 12 months since the Graduate e-cohort was introduced and much has happened in that time. Australia and New Zealand are well into the study and set to launch the second Graduate survey in the coming months. Our Canadian partner, The University of Montreal, started recruiting into the study in March this year and is doing well. Additionally, the first publication from the study, a collaborative paper between New Zealand and Australia, is nearing completion and will be submitted for publication in the near future. We will advise you as soon as it becomes available and set up a link to the journal in which it is published.

Currently, total participation in the study is hovering at just under 250 graduates. This is a great effort and we thank each and every one of you for your time and enthusiasm. You are the heart of our research and we appreciate your ongoing commitment to this important study.

Why do I receive the occasional ‘test message’? What are you testing for?

From time-to-time you may receive a ‘test message’ from the Graduate e-cohort team in your country. Test messages are used to regularly check that the e-cohort system is working properly. Test messages serve a variety of functions. Very rarely they identify an issue with our email system that would otherwise go undetected until the major survey period each year and we are able to rectify it before it becomes a major problem. Additionally, a test email may also result in an email that bounces back to us as a participant has changed their email address. This then gives us the ability to track down that person before we lose track of them altogether.

A uniform approach...

The traditional image of the nurse is largely that of the ward nurse clad in a white uniform or apron with a starched cap or veil. Gordon & Nelson* (2006, p.16) state to “ ... make the nurse respectable, they modified veils and cornettes into the nurse’s cap, and nuns’ habits into the drab starched uniform of the Nightingale nurse”. For more on the Canadian development and cultural interpretation of the nurse’s uniform in the early 20th century, read Bates, C. (2010) Looking closely: material and visual approaches to the nurse’s uniform. Nursing History Review, 18, 167 - 189.

(*Chapter 1: Moving beyond the virtue script in nursing. In S. Nelson & S. Gordon (Eds). The complexities of care: nursing reconsidered. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.)

Who was ... Vivian Bullwinkel?

Vivian Bullwinkel, an Australian Army nurse, was one of 22 nurses who survived the sinking of the Vyner Brooke during evacuation of Singapore in 1942. The nurses, who surrendered to the Japanese on Bangka Island, were subsequently marched back out into the ocean where they were machine-gunned from behind by their captors. After watching her colleagues fall beside her, Vivian was shot through the hip and collapsed into the water. She feigned death until she floated back to shore on the current. She was the only survivor. Vivian came across an injured soldier and nursed him in the jungle for 12 days until finally deciding to give themselves up to the Japanese. Vivian strategically positioned a water bottle over the bullet hole in the front of her uniform: she knew that if the Japanese saw the bullet holes, both she and her patient would be killed.

Vivian spent the rest of the War as a prisoner in a Japanese POW camp. Following the end of the War, she gave evidence against the Japanese at the War Crimes Tribunal in Tokyo. She raised funds to help establish the Nurses Memorial Centre in Melbourne. Vivian returned to civilian nursing, becoming the Deputy Matron of Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital and then Matron of the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital in Melbourne. In 1975, immediately prior to the fall of Saigon, she led a team that evacuated 80 Vietnamese war orphans back to Australia. She was politically active in relation to the development of nursing and made many contributions to nurse education in Australia, a role she continued to follow into her retirement.

Vivian was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal and an Order of Australia. When she died in 2000, she was honoured with State Funerals in both Melbourne and Perth. Her official war portrait (above) and the uniform she wore when she was captured at Bangka Island both hang in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.

(for more information go to http://www.vivianbullwinkel.com/)

New Zealand and Canadian participants: do you have a famous nurse from your neck of the woods that you'd like to see profiled in the next newsletter? If so, please email the nurse's name and why they are famous to susan@grad.e-cohort.net and I'll select one to incorporate in the next newsletter.