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Witte, Rose (audio interview #2 of 2)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This is the final interview with Rose Witte. It was conducted by a CSULB student who was also a pharmacist and who worked with Witte at Long Beach Community Hospital at the time of the interview. The audio quality of this interview is good. 3/15/1984
- Date
- 2020-12-01
- Resource Type
- Creator
- Campus
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["Submitted by Chloe Pascual (chloe.pascual@csulb.edu) on 2020-12-02T02:02:28Z No. of bitstreams: 2 9560901588914815-cbrwitte3.mp3: 7367783 bytes, checksum: 92148f33bf95cd0481ca84e46a6ace55 (MD5) 7620149555702476-cbrwitte4.mp3: 3432070 bytes, checksum: 8438fb86bb49558c3c29c2bffeebd93b (MD5)", "Made available in DSpace on 2020-12-02T02:02:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 9560901588914815-cbrwitte3.mp3: 7367783 bytes, checksum: 92148f33bf95cd0481ca84e46a6ace55 (MD5) 7620149555702476-cbrwitte4.mp3: 3432070 bytes, checksum: 8438fb86bb49558c3c29c2bffeebd93b (MD5)"]- Language
- Notes
- SUBJECT BIO - Rose Witte was a nurse in the maternity ward of Long Beach Community Hospital for many years. She observed changed in the hospital and in the community around it. Witte came to Long Beach after she graduated from nurse's training and, after working briefly at the Los Angeles hospital, she came to Long Beach and found position at Community Hospital. She applied for a surgical position, but the one that was open was in the maternity ward. When she first arrived, she lived in a nurse's residence run by the hospital. Witte was interviewed by a CSULB oral history student who was also a pharmacist at Long Beach Community Hospital. TOPICS - family history; Los Angeles County Hospital; nursing training; delivery of babies; maternity wards; medications used during childbirth; special care nursing; Fillmore Condit; nursing career; development of Long Beaabortion and birth control; nurses' training school; nursing career; WWII; nurse receptionist; and attitude towards retirement;
- *** File: cbrwitte3.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-2:31)... Witte does not recall anyone else in her high school graduating class becoming a nurse. She was the only nurse in her family. She did not take an classes in high school that prepared her for nurse's training. She thought that as a nurse, she would be responsible for taking care of sick people. Before starting nursing school, she worked odd jobs during summers. Her father worked at a creamery making butter. (2:31-4:42)... There is an interruption in this segment when Witte answers the telephone. When Witte first started working at Los Angeles County Hospital she was overwhelmed by its size. The hospital where she worked in Monticello, Iowa only had 40 beds while Los Angeles County Hospital had several hundred. The nursing she did there involved administering medicine to patients. She earned abut $80 a month. The hospital had dormitories but only the nursing students could live there. Witte and a friend rented a room in a family home. (4:42-8:26)... She worked at Los Angeles County Hospital for a year before moving in with her aunt and uncle in Long Beach. That's when she applied for a position as a surgical nurse at Long Beach Community Hospital. She had been trained as a maternity and surgical nurse in Iowa and wanted to work in surgery. At Community, however, there were no openings in surgical nursing, so she accepted a position in the maternity ward. She was still in training when she delivered her first child in Iowa at the age of nineteen. Most of the women who lived in that small town in Iowa went to the hospital to deliver their children. Most of the women living in the country around that town delivered their children at home. (8:26-12:21)... Most of the babies born in Long Beach were delivered in the hospital. Three or 4 doctors specialized in obstetrics and gynecology at Long Beach Community Hospital. General practitioners, however,supervised most of the deliveries. When she was on duty, she was in the delivery room for every delivery at the hospital. Occasionally, she administered either dripped ether or chloroform during difficult periods labor or delivery. Doctors also gave women morphine or Demerol for pain. The hospital pharmacy dispensed drugs for hospital procedures. (12:21-14:06)... There were very few instances when women came into the hospital suffering complications from self induced abortions. These women were generally sent to the surgery department, not the maternity ward. Any patient in the maternity ward that required surgery was sent to the surgery department. No surgeries were performed in the maternity ward because its sole function was delivering babies. (14:06-18:53)... Long Beach Community Hospital started employing nurses' aids and LVNs after WWII. During the war, there were many auxiliary groups helping the nursing staff at the hospital. Most of the nurses at the hospital were single women and lived in the nurses' residence on the hospital grounds. When Witte first started working at the hospital, she had a single room in the hospital dormitory. As the number of patients the hospital treated grew and the staff increased, the nurses began sharing rooms. Two adjacent rooms shared a common bathroom. There was also a kitchen for the nurses. The residence had 24 rooms and the hospital superintendent and her assistant also lived at the nurses' residence. (18:53-22:37)... Working at the hospital during the Depression was convenient because she did not have to pay for room and board and received a steady salary. The hospital did not cut its staff during the Depression. It continued to treat patients even if they could not afford to pay for their treatment. There was an article in a 1973 issue of Long Beach Review regarding the development of Long Beach Community Hospital and the author talks about the role of Fillmore Condit in getting the hospital built. When she read this article, it minded her of the family feeling in the hospital when she started working there. She never regretted a day that she worked at the hospital. (22:37-26:47)... About the time the hospital was built, oil was discovered on Signal Hill and there was a boom in Long Beach. Witte could see oil fields from the hospital campus. There was little residential development around the new hospital. The houses around the hospital were on large lots where residents raised chickens, cows, fruit and vegetables. There were no sidewalks along the streets around the hospital. She walked or took a bus to shop downtown and bank at Farmers & Merchant Bank. (26:47-29:11)... During her early years in nursing, there were no intensive care units. "Special care" nurses were brought in to care for severely ill patients. These nurses usually worked 12 hour shifts and 2 nurses cared for each patient. When hospitals changed their employment policies and nurses began working 8 hour shifts, they needed 3 special nurses for each severely ill patient. Head nurses did not supervise special care nurses and floor nurses did not usually treat their patients. (29:11-30:39)... Although there have been many changes in the nursing field, Witte has not seen many changes in maternity nursing because the way that babies are born has not changed. Community Hospital didn't have a birth control clinic. End of tape. *** File: cbrwitte4.mp3 (0:00-1:11)... There is an interruption in the tape in this segment. When Witte began nursing, patients didn't discuss birth control and abortion nurses. Patients usually discussed these issues with medical doctors. Today, these subjects are opening discussed and Witte feels that "nothing is sacred anymore." (1:11-4:24)... Witte lost her nurses' pin and spent many years trying to get a new one. She is afraid that the hospital where she was trained closed in the 1940s. It was turned into a military hospital during WWII and the community built a new hospital after the war. She believes that student nurses don't receive the same practical training that she did as a student. (4:24-7:10)... Witte never thought she would work at the same place for so many years when she started her career at Long Beach Community Hospital. Some time in the 1950, she started working as hospital's nurse receptionist. The hospital had an information desk but it wasn't staffed by a registered nurse. During WWII, there was a group of women who volunteered their time and helped the hospital staff. (7:10-14:17)... At the time of the interview, Witte had worked at Long Beach Community Hospital for close to 60 years and she thinks she is getting close to retirement. When she retires, she'd like to continue working at the hospital as a volunteer. She never had time to develop any hobbies and she thinks that it would be very difficult for her to stop working altogether. If she returns to the hospital after she retires, she would like to work with patients and not do any "book" work. She often meets former patients and sometime it seems like she knows "half of Long Beach" because she's met so many people at the hospital. She does not think hospital construction will ever end. End of tape.
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7620149555702476-cbrwitte4.mp3 | 2023-10-19 | Public | Download |