Nursing Mural

The Nursing Mural honors the Nursing Profession and was dedicated on April 4, 2002, in recognition of the National Student Nurses Association, Inc. 50th Anniversary Convention Celebration and Alumni Reunion held in Philadelphia, April 3-7, 2002.

The Nursing Mural was designed to:

• Honor the Nursing Profession in a very visible way
• Create a work of art, as art is healing
• Express the variety and array of settings in which nurses practice
• Showcase the cultural diversity among nurses
• Promote the image of nursing

Description of Panels from left to right

Panel 1: An anonymous African-American pediatric nurse is shown with a patient. In the background is a "ghosted" figure of a WWII African-American nurse whose identity is not known but her image is from an "outtake' of the movie "Sentimental Women Need Not Apply."

Panel 2: A nurse in OR scrub attire with operating room lights in the background conveys the image of a nurse; in this case an OR nurse of Asian ancestry. There are a large number of professional nurses of Asian and Indian ancestry living and practicing in the Philadelphia area.

Panel 3: This is from a WWII poster that "Uncle Sam" used to recruit nurses. In the lower portion is a "ghosted" image of Mary Anne Krisman-Scott comforting a serviceman in Viet Nam. Mary Anne is a Nurse Practitioner, a Professor of Nursing, and a respected Nurse Historian. Dr. Krisman-Scott volunteered to serve in Viet Nam in the late 1960's. When she returned home she found, as did many of her colleagues, that her sacrifices were not appreciated by the American public. As time passed however, public opinion changed, and people began to listen and question these nurses' stories.

Panel 4: This portrays Helen Fairchild (1884-1918) who was a graduate of the Pennsylvania Hospital School of Nursing. She was among the first 60 nurses sent to Europe with the Allied Expeditionary forces during WWI, and she became one of the nearly 300 nurses who would die during the war and the influenza epidemic of 1918. She served in Belgium during the summer of 1917 near the front lines where she was subjected to gas attacks. Later that fall while in France, she became ill and in spite of strenuous efforts on her behalf, she died in January, 1918. She is buried in France and American Legion Post 412 in Philadelphia is named in her Honor.

Panel 5: This panel is full of historical and contemporary imagery. In the lower right hand corner Lula Warlick is "ghosted". Ms. Warlick took over the leadership of the nursing school at Mercy Hospital in Philadelphia in 1920. She was a 1910 graduate of the Lincoln Hospital and came to Philadelphia with rich experience as a leader at Provident Hospital in Chicago and Kansas City General Hospital #2. She built the school at Mercy into one of the four most important schools of nursing for African-Americans in the country. It was nearly impossible for African -Americans to study nursing unless these schools prospered. Lula Warlick during her 23-year tenure at Mercy, made sure that her school was a success. She was awarded the Mary Mahoney Medal of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in 1940. Most of the African-Americans who became nurse between WWI and WWII went to Mercy, which became Mercy Douglass. Many local nurses remember Ms. Warlick as a very important figure in their lives and one could argue that she single-handedly made decent nursing care available to Blacks in segregated Philadelphia. Walt Whitman (bearded) is above her and accompanied by an image of an anonymous male nurse. It is a well documented fact that Walt Whitman provided care to the sick and wounded during the Civil War. At the top of the panel (between the hands) is an image of Barbara Brody (at a young age) examining a patient's ear (it's hard to see the otoscope). Barbara is recently retired from the University of Virginia. She was one of the pioneers in the pediatric nurse practitioner movement and a famous historian of nursing. At the bottom of the panel is the quote "Good and Careful Nurses…For want thereof, many must suffer greatly, and some perish, that might otherwise have been restored to health and comfort, and become useful to themselves, their families and the public, for many years after,…" Benjamin Franklin, c. 1754.

Sponsors of the mural are: the School of Nursing Alumni Associations of Thomas Jefferson Hospital, Methodist Hospital, Germantown Hospital, Pennsylvania Hospital, Albert Einstein Medical Center, Lankenau Hospital, Frankford Hospital, Temple Hospital, Abington Memorial Hospital, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania & Penn Nursing, and Villanova University. Contributors are the School of Nursing Alumni Associations of Roxborough Memorial Hospital, Chestnut Hill Hospital, Presbyterian Hospital, Northeastern Hospital, and Sigma Theta Tau-Delta Tau Chapter.

Copyright for image:
"Tribute to Nursing"
Copyright 2002 Philadelphia Department of Recreation Mural Arts Program
Artist Sam Donovan
Assistant Artist Karl Yoder