Helen Lamb: some insight into her life and times--Part 2.

Helen Lamb was born September 28, 1899, in Butler, Mo, a small town about 60 miles south of Kansas City, Mo. Her mother was Anna Catherine Judy and her father, Leslie Lamb, was a physician in Butler. Helen received her nurses training at Christian Church Hospital, Kansas City, Mo, and she received her registered nurse license in 1921. Later, training in the art and science of anesthesia took place at Lakeside Hospital School of Anesthesia in Cleveland, Ohio (Figure 1). Lakeside Hospital School of Anesthesia was not the first school of anesthesia in the United States but one of the most well known. The school’s founding chief surgeon was George W. Crile, MD, and his anesthetist was Agatha C. Hodgins, who was instrumental in the formation of the National Association of Nurse Anesthetists in 1931 (renamed American Association of Nurse Anesthetists [AANA] in 1939). Lamb began her anesthesia training at Lakeside in the early 1920s. The training lasted approximately 6 months and tuition cost $100. To provide students with greater clinical experience, Lakeside provided a system of affiliation with other Cleveland hospitals. Hodgins lectured her students from notes, which were eventually mimeographed and distributed to the students for a small charge. Lamb remained at Lakeside until 1927 when she was recruited by Evarts A. Graham, MD, head of surgery at Barnes Hospital in St Louis, Mo. When Graham was appointed as the first full-time head of surgery at Barnes Hospital in 1919, it was a 90-bed hospital affiliated with the Washington University School of Medicine. Lamb would become the sole personal nurse anesthetist for Graham. She administered and managed all of the anesthetics for Graham’s patients for more than 20 years (Figure 2). Lamb was not the first nurse anesthetist at Barnes Hospital. Some of the staff surgeons at Barnes hired their own nurse anesthetist who worked solely with that particular surgeon (Figure 3). This situation caused conflict within the Department of Surgery and the hospital. Graham recruited Lamb because of her recommendations and training. There was an increasing number and complexity of surgical cases being performed at Barnes because of the institution’s increasingly worldwide reputation, and there were inadequate numbers of physician anesthesiologists available.