Celebration 2018: 100 Years of Hadassah Nurses

HIGHLIGHTS: Hadassah Nurses

From two nurses facing the overwhelming task of bringing health and hygiene to a backward population to their critical role in delivering the most advanced health care in the Middle East, Hadassah nurses have been part of the fabric of Israel for a century.

Creating Leaders in the Nursing Profession

• Our top-tier Hadassah nurses and nursing students have played a vital role in Israel in times of war and terror, and in times of peace, for a century.
• The Nursing School participates in exchange programs with universities around the world, bringing and sharing cutting-edge expertise and building collaborative efforts.
• The school’s new PhD nursing program was instituted in 2016, following on the success of the creation of an advanced clinical master’s program began in 2001.
• The baccalaureate program in nursing was established in the 1970s.
• The Nursing School added a special track for women’s health to the curriculum in 2006.
• In 1960, the School of Nursing began training African and Asian nurses as part of Israel’s aid to developing nations.
• The first class of 22 nurses graduated in 1921. They came from every walk of life. The school, and the students, were more than visionary; they were revolutionary. The School of Nursing brought American methods and organization to Israel. These students went on to distinguish themselves, as leaders of nursing education, public health management, and social work. Several went abroad.

Hadassah Brings Healing to Jerusalem

• When Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold visited Palestine, she was shocked by Jerusalem’s poverty and filthy living conditions, soaring infant mortality rate, and ignorance of the most basic hygiene.
• In 1912 she founded Hadassah with members of her Zionist study group. Less than a year later, two American nurses—Rose Kaplan and Rachel Landy—set sail for Jerusalem.
• Nurses Kaplan and Landy set up Hadassah’s first public health and welfare station in a stone house. March 23, 1913, was the first time Hadassah brought healing to Jerusalem. The welfare station initially focused on maternity and infant care. In their first year in Jerusalem, the nurses treated 5,000 children suffering from eye disease; 20% with trachoma. Simultaneously, they taught mothers – and midwives – hygiene basics.
• Hadassah established 166 welfare stations throughout the country, which were eventually transferred to the State of Israel after 1948, forming the basis for Israel’s public health system.
• Henrietta Szold worked tirelessly to persuade American physicians to go to Palestine, where medical care was scarce and desperately needed. In 1918, the American Zionist Medical Unit, a group of 45 doctors and nurses, pharmacists and dentists, traveled to Palestine and set up hospitals in Safed, Jaffa and Tiberias, and later in Tel Aviv and Haifa. They established Hadassah’s School of Nursing in Jerusalem—the first nursing school in the region.
• In 1936 the school was named the Henrietta Szold Hadassah School of Nursing.