The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Joan Durdin, author of They Became Nurses: A History of Nursing in South Australia, 1836-1980 (1991) and Eleven Thousand Nurses: A History of Nursing Education at the Royal Adelaide Hospital 1889-1993 (1999), was a nurse educator and historian who contributed much to the advancement of nursing through the development of advanced education in the higher education sector. In addition to her ten years’ teaching at Royal Adelaide Hospital she spent six years as a nurse educator in Papua New Guinea. She conducted extensive oral history interviews for the Royal Adelaide Hospital Heritage and History Committee, 1991-1998. Durdin received an Honorary Doctorate from Flinders University in 1994, was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1985 and is commemorated by the Joan Durdin Oration, an annual event initiated and sponsored by the Department of Clinical Nursing at the University of Adelaide.