How do you tell the story of a profession that spent over a century working in the shadows of the operating room? In this introduction, Marianne Bankert sets out to recover the overlooked history of America's nurse anesthetists. This kicks off Volume 1 of Watchful Care.

Expand your education and knowledge about Nurse Anesthesia by interacting with the Beyond The Mask Podcast.

Learn more about becoming a member of the AANA.

Pick up the paperback versions of Watchful Care I and Watchful Care II on Amazon.

Before there was a profession, there was Alice Magaw. A nurse at the Mayo brothers' side who quietly became one of the most trusted anesthetists in the country, without a single fatality across thousands of surgeries. This opening chapter traces the scientific breakthroughs of the late 1800s that made her work possible, the first women who stepped into the operating room to do it, and how the earliest forms of anesthesia evolved into the practice we'd recognize today.

Expand your education and knowledge about Nurse Anesthesia by interacting with the ⁠Beyond The Mask Podcast⁠.

Learn more about becoming a member of the ⁠AANA⁠.

Pick up the paperback versions of ⁠Watchful Care I⁠ and ⁠Watchful Care II⁠ on Amazon.

When surgeon George Crile needed someone to master a new, riskier form of anesthesia, he didn't turn to a physician — he chose a nurse, Agatha Hodgins. Together they took their techniques to the front lines of the First World War, treating soldiers in shock, proving nurse anesthesia could hold up under the worst conditions medicine had ever faced. But back home, that same skill was too often dismissed as simply "women's work." This chapter follows Hodgins' rise, her partnership with Crile, and the fight to be taken seriously in a profession that owed her so much.

Expand your education and knowledge about Nurse Anesthesia by interacting with the ⁠⁠Beyond The Mask Podcast⁠⁠.

Learn more about becoming a member of the ⁠⁠AANA⁠⁠.

Pick up the paperback versions of ⁠⁠Watchful Care I⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Watchful Care II⁠⁠ on Amazon.