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Cadets were expected to graduate in thirty-months and to provide essential nursing services for the duration of the war, either in the military or in civilian life. Most Senior Cadets rendered nursing services on the home front, where many positions were vacated during the war by nurses who went overseas to care for the wounded. Postgraduate scholarships and refresher courses for nurse graduates were also offered by the Cadet Nurse Corps to remedy the shortage of nursing school instructors, public health nurses, industrial nurses, and psychiatric nurses.

For a school of nursing to qualify for the Cadet Nurse program several requirements had to be fulfilled. The school was required to be accredited and to be affiliated with a hospital approved by the American College of Surgeons. The school also had to have adequate staff and facilities. Congress had mandated that all schools, regardless of size, would have to be eligible for aid through the Cadet Nurse program, even though some schools had lower educational standards. As a result, substandard conditions in the weaker schools were improved by funding from the Corps and advice given by field consultants.

Recruitment Campaign. Many organizations and institutions were involved in the active recruitment campaign of the Corps. Corporate, cinema, radio, and magazine promotion of the Corps were the most influential and visible elements of the recruitment campaign. Millions of newspaper and magazine readers, radio listeners, and movie-goers were exposed to the Cadet Nurse Corps through ads, articles, shows, and films. More than 300 national radio programs broadcast information about the Corps. Film stars posed with "pretty Cadets in Hollywood" and "Cadets in Washington were photographed with notables." Companies such as the Eastman Kodak, Pond's Cold Cream, Kotex, Pepsi-Cola, Old Spice, Sanka Coffee and National Biscuit Company ran ads featuring Cadet Nurses.

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