Barbara Fawkes was chief education officer and examiner for the General Nursing Council for England and Wales; principal tutor sister at the Middlesex Hospital, London; and president of the International Council of Nurses. Granted a fellowship by the Red Cross to study in America, Fawkes obtained a BSc in Nursing at Columbia University. Sponsored by the Florence Nightingale Foundation she toured Australia and New Zealand in 1953 studying Australia's hospitals and nurse training methods. She was made a Fellow of the New South Wales College of Nursing and a Life Governor of the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1984. She received an OBE for her services to nursing. Fawkes visited Australia on many occasions and lived in Melbourne in her retirement in the 1980s, while continuing to serve on medical boards and participate in conferences.
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Australian Women's Register
Barbara Fawkes trained as a nurse and midwife at the Middlesex Hospital School of Nursing, England, 1934-1938. She continued her nursing career into the post-World War II era. In 1942 Fawkes gained a Bachelor of Science degree from Columbia University, USA, and followed this with a year spent touring nursing schools in Canada, New Zealand and Australia. In the mid-1970s Fawkes moved to Melbourne and continued to provide assistance for nurses and nursing organisations. Fawkes was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
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Encyclopedia of Australian Science