Clara Noyes

Clara Dutton Noyes (October 3, 1869 – June 3, 1936) was an American nurse who headed the American Red Cross department of nursing during World War I. In 1998 she was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame.

Clara Noyes
Clara Noyes in 1905

Early life and education

Clara Dutton Noyes was born in Port Deposit, Maryland, one of the ten children of Enoch Noyes and Laura Lay Banning Noyes. Her father had been a colonel with the 26th Connecticut Volunteers in the American Civil War. She graduated from nurses' training at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1896.[1]

Career
Chief Executives of the American Red Cross Department of Nursing (1918). Noyes is third from the right, between Jane Delano and Elizabeth Gordon Fox.

During World War I and after, Clara Noyes was director of the American Red Cross's Bureau of Nursing, responsible for recruiting, assigning, and organizing nurses for assignments overseas in war zones and epidemics, and in the United States during natural disasters and other emergencies.[2] She lectured and wrote on matters of public health, disaster relief, and nursing education.[3] In 1920 she went to inspect Red Cross project sites in the Balkans, Greece, Czechoslovakia and Poland.[4]

From 1918 to 1922 she was president of the American Nurses Association, and of the National Graduate Nurses Association.[5] She also served a term as president of the National League of Nursing Education. She helped establish the Bureau of Nursing Information. In 1923, she was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal by the International Committee of the Red Cross.[6] In 1933, she was awarded the Saunders Medal by the National League of Nursing Education, for her many years of service to her profession.[7]

Clara Noyes wrote about "The Midwifery Problem" in an article with that title in 1912.[8] She advocated for education, certification, and supervision.[9] She proposed a School of Midwifery modeled on schools of nursing, and she started a program for midwives while she was a nurse supervisor at Bellevue Hospital.[10]

Later life and legacy

Clara Dutton Noyes died in 1936, after a heart attack while driving in Washington D. C., aged 66 years.[11] In 1998 she was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame.[12]

Clara Noyes: Life of A Global Nursing Leader (2017) is a recent biography of Noyes, by her great-great nephew Roger Noyes.[13]

References
  1. "This Way Forward: Clara Noyes (1869-1936)" Johns Hopkins Nursing (July 29, 2015).
  2. "'Doctor' to World Travels by Mail" North Adams Transcript (August 11, 1927): 2. via Newspapers.comopen access
  3. "Neglect Nurse Training Too Much" Topeka Daily Capital (November 14, 1921): 6. via Newspapers.comopen access
  4. "Miss Clara Noyes Will Inspect Red Cross Work Abroad" The Index-Journal (September 20, 1920): 1. via Newspapers.comopen access
  5. "Miss Westover Attended Graduate Nurses Convention" Central Record (June 16, 1921): 1. via Newspapers.comopen access
  6. "The Florence Nightingale Medal" American Journal of Nursing (September 1949): 580. DOI: 10.2307/3458447
  7. "Famed Nurse is Awarded Medal" Sunday Morning Star (June 11, 1933): 9.
  8. Clara D. Noyes, "The Midwifery Problem" American Journal of Nursing 12(6)(March 1912): 466-471.
  9. "No Conservation of Life of Child" Huntington Herald (September 30, 1912): 7. via Newspapers.comopen access
  10. Laura Elizabeth Ettinger, Nurse-Midwifery: The Birth of a New American Profession (Ohio State University Press 2006): 14. ISBN 9780814210239
  11. "Head of Red Cross Nursing Unit Dies While Driving Auto" Brooklyn Daily Eagle (June 3, 1936): 3. via Newspapers.comopen access
  12. "Clara Noyes (1869-1936), 1998 inductee" American Nurses Association Hall of Fame.
  13. Roger Noyes, Clara Noyes: Life of A Global Nursing Leader (Northshire Bookstore 2017). ISBN 9781605713502
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