Women and Health Care

Women and Health Care

Women and Health Care
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 5 to 7
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	9.37

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		maternity, occupation, comeback, unofficial, traditional, wartime, provided, founded, mainly, colonial, organization, wounded, elderly, health, readily, valuable
	content words:		Revolutionary War, Civil War, Clara Barton, United States, Red Cross, American Medical Association, Elizabeth Blackwell, Medical College, New York, Melinda Ann Richards

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Women and Health Care
By Sharon Fabian

¹     In colonial times women provided health care for their families and neighbors. Doctors were often not available, and at that time they had not learned to cure many of the illnesses that we often go to a doctor for today. So women usually cared for the sick in their homes. Women did the work of both nurses and midwives, caring for people when they were sick and delivering babies.

²     Women also provided valuable medical services in the wars that our country was involved in. Women cared for wounded soldiers in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Their wartime work was the real beginning of modern nursing practices. Doctors became more accepting of the work done by nurses after seeing the skill that they used to treat the wounded soldiers. Training for nurses became more readily available after the Civil War. One famous Civil War nurse was Clara Barton; she became famous not only for treating victims of the war, but also for persuading the United States to join the Red Cross, an organization to help victims of wars around the world.

³     By the middle of the 1800's, hospitals were being built to treat the sick and injured. The American Medical Association was also formed to regulate medical care. Medical schools trained doctors in modern medical practices. As hospitals became more widespread, the role of women in medicine declined for a while. At first medical schools were only for men, and people began to look down on female nurses and midwives who did not have medical schooling. Now many people preferred to be treated by a male doctor in a hospital.

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