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Lyle Creelman: The Frontiers of Global Nursing By Susan Armstrong-Reid (Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2014) (448 pages; $70.00 cloth, $70.00 e-book)
Susan Armstrong-Reid's book comes at a time when the International Council of Nurses points to the decline of nursing within the World Health Organization (WHO; p. ix). The current evolution was at odds with the moment when Lyle Creelman, the Canadian nurse who is the principal protagonist of Armstrong-Reid's volume, joined the WHO (1949) and was its chief nursing officer (1954-1968). In those days, she and others successfully placed nursing on the agenda of this male-dominated medical institution, the nursing staff expanded, and the nursing activities unfurled in a growing number of countries (disease campaigns, children and maternal health, nursing education). Yet, Armstrong-Reid is not presenting a tale of some golden age where nursing would have been more present thanks to a gifted leader. The five chapters (out of 11) that she devotes to Creelman's WHO years are, for a large part, a group portrait of the nurses who worked for WHO at the headquarters, in regional offices, or in the field. Their hardships, their worldviews, and their activities are analyzed with great care as ArmstrongReid weaves together interviews, Creelman's diaries, and the (chiefly private) correspondence that...