The title of this blog, Die Krankenschwester (kron/ken/shwes/ter) translates to The Sick Sister.  It  is the German word for nurse.  In this blog, I begin with the question: Has media representation of nurses affected their identity? I explore the question through posts using visual art and sometimes essays. The posts are not authoratative declarations nor draw conclusions about nurses or nursing. They’re more about art and observation than science, although Die Krankenschwester is an experiment.

In this inaugural post, I quote from the preface of Notes on Nursing: what it is, and what it is not, by Florence Nightingale:

The following notes are by no means intended as a rule of thought by which nurses can teach themselves to nurse, still less as a manual to teach nurses to nurse. They are meant simply to give hints for thought to women who have personal charge of the health of others. Every woman…has, at one time or another of her life, charge of the personal health of somebody, whether child or invalid,- in other words, every woman is a nurse.

Is every woman a nurse? Not all nurses are women.