Hospital reorganization after WWI

“The success of the American base hospitals left an indelible mark on the institutional values and organization of postwar American hospitals. At least until after WWII, surgeons emerged as the authoritative figures in hospitals. . . . anyone who had not been in on ‘the action’ during the war was far less likely to prevail during postwar planning for hospital reorganization. Since women were excluded from the Army Medical Reserves, and few had been involved with the overseas military hospitals, they largely stood on the sidelines. The ACS’s preferred mechanism for hospital reform, internal reorganization of the medical staff, often placed power in the hands of those physicians and surgeons most unsympathetic in the older, patient-centered values associated with general practitioners, including the majority of women physicians. The gender-based professional niche – in which women physicians were explicitly assigned to the treatment of women patients – disappeared from hospital organization charts” (More, 118, 119).