A new honour board recognising Launceston General Hospital-trained nurses who served during the world wars has been unveiled.
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The project arose after a researcher in Victoria developed an honour board for the Methodist Ladies College in Kew and through research, discovered two nurses who trained at the LGH.
With no existing honour board, the hospital’s Ex-Trainee Nurses' Association decided to take the project on with funding support from the LGH Historical Committee.
Association president and committee chairwoman Deanna Ellis said a considerable number of nurses working at the LGH enlisted in both wars, with many also coming from the mainland for training.
"The reputation that the hospital had as an excellent training program was acknowledged interstate and overseas," Mrs Ellis said.
"We can go all the way back to the late 1800s and find examples of LGH being referred to people from as far as Scotland.
“It came with a very high recommendation for training even back then.”
The board was designed by members of the Trainee Nurses' Association and now hangs on level three of the hospital, opposite a number of historical photos.
It features the names of 32 female nurses who enlisted during World War I and 26 for World War II, and one male nurse.
The LGH took its last intake of nurses for training in 1978.
As a nurse educator with more than 20 years’ experience, Mrs Ellis said the honour board represented a significant part of the hospital’s history.
“It is very important to recognise the sacrifice that these nurses made,” she said.
“We thought we really should do something and now it hangs somewhere where people can really appreciate it.”
Mrs Ellis said the association was committed to preserving the history of Tasmanian nurses, offering a number of scholarships to support professional development.
She is currently working on a new book, detailing the history of a handful of nurses who trained at LGH.