Post-World War I Children’s Healthcare in Slovenia as Experienced by Angela Boškin, the First Slovenian Nurse

Abstract

This paper addresses children’s healthcare in the first post-World War I decade in the area of present-day Slovenia. During a time when school physicians were returning from military service and paediatricians were becoming more active, the first Slovenian home care nurse Angela Boškin played a significant role in caring for infants and mothers as well as in organising and developing the home care service. By analysing her work, this paper will attempt to reconstruct the demanding post-war social conditions which required healthcare improvements for all children.Boškin’s work is distinguished by two key achievements: the establishment of the first Slovenian counselling service for mothers and infants in Jesenice in 1919 which Boškin achieved in cooperation with physicians, thereby laying the foundation for the social and healthcare work of home care nurses. In 1922, she established a children’s shelter in collaboration with Dr. Matija Ambrožič in a rundown and overcrowded orphanage on Bohoričeva Street in Ljubljana that developed into the first childcare institution (Zavod za socialno higiensko zaščito dece), where she worked as the first professionally qualified nurse.