Nurse, Please!! Fifty Incredible Years as a Rural Kansas Nurse

Follow Rose Holcomb through nurse's training, then on to office practice, and finally to the night shift of a rural Kansas hospital in the 1950s. Along the way, experience some of the things that she experienced:

- the lady who gave birth and two months later gave birth again

- the doctor's office where no appointment was necessary, prescriptions were filled and left inside the screen door for pick up after hours

- the emergency operation that required transfusions of a rare blood type and where community volunteer blood donors with that type just happened to be at the hospital for a scheduled operation on someone else

Read the incredible story of how nursing in rural America has changed from the fifties until now.

Rose Holcomb was born and raised in Abbyville, Kansas. Early in her life she followed the call to become a nurse, graduating from Wesley Hospital School of Nursing in Wichita, Kansas in 1950.

After graduation, she worked for a private doctor in Stafford, Kansas, for two years, then as a special duty nurse, before starting 35 years as a night shift nurse at Stafford District Hospital.

Now retired, Rose has taken the time to record some of her nursing memories. A working mom before the phrase was coined, Rose continues to help out on the farm where she raised her family and remains active in her local church. When the phone rings, she still answers the nursing call, doling out advice, taking blood pressure readings, and administering allergy shots in her rural community of Plevna, Kansas. She is happily married to her husband of 52 years, and enjoys spending time with their 4 sons and daughters-in-law, and their 11 grandchildren.