Alice Magaw

Background

Alice Magaw was born on November 9, 1860 in Coshocton, Ohio to Thomas and Nancy Elizabeth Magaw.

Education

Magaw attended the Women's Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago, Illinois from 1887 to 1889 with her friend Edith Graham and Edith"s older sister, Dinah.

Career

Her innovations helped lead to major advances in modern surgery and earned her the title of the "mother of anesthesia." In 1881, the Magaw family relocated to the Five Corners area of Rochester, Minnesota. Magaw married Doctor George Kessel, a fifty-two-year-old widow with four children, on May 23, 1908. The Kessels lived in Cresco, Iowa.

The Kessels separated in 1919.

After graduating from the Women's Hospital School of Nursing in 1889, Magaw worked as a private duty nurse in Chicago. In 1893, Magaw became the anesthetist for Doctorates

Magaw continued her anesthesia career delivering anesthetics to patient"s at the Kessel Hospital in Cresco, Iowa, but returned to practice at the Mayo in the early 1920s after her separation from Doctor Kessel. Her delivery of fourteen thousand anesthetics without an anesthesia-related death established a record for the safety of the practice of anesthesia by nurses.

Honors and Magaw died from complications of diabetes on February 17, 1928.

After a funeral in Rochester and a private family funeral in Corunna, Michigan, Magaw was buried in the Pine Tree Cemetery in Corunna, Michigan.

Achievements

• In 1899, Magaw became the first nurse anesthetist to be published when the Northwestern Lancet printed her article “Observations in Anesthesia.” Five more articles would follow. Charles Mayo bestowed upon her the name “Mother of Anesthesia” for her mastery of open drop ether. The American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA) established the Alice Magaw Outstanding Clinical Practitioner Award (formally the Clinical Anesthesia Practitioner Award) in 1998 to honor Magaw. This award recognizes the accomplishments of CRNAs involved in direct patient care, who have made an important contribution to the advancement of nurse anesthesia practice.