Drusilla Rageu Poole

Drusilla Rageu Poole died of intestinal cancer on 11 December 1981 in Houston.

In 1974, Poole was awarded the Distinguished Alumnae Award from the Yale School of Nursing.

In 1973, Poole was awarded the Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee Award for outstanding army nursing service by the US Surgeon General and the Daughters of the American Revolution.

In 1972, Poole delivered the dedication address for the Arlington National Cemetery nurses memorial.

In 1969 she earned her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation was A study of role perceptions of nursing faculty in sixteen state university schools of nursing in the southern region.

In 1963 she returned to Asia as the Army Nurse Corps' chief nurse supervisor in Korea.

In 1954, she joined the Army Nurse Corps. In 1957, Captain Poole was stationed at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. From 1958 to 1959 she was head of the National League for Nursing Disaster Nursing Project at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing.

Back in the United States, Poole worked at the Grace-New Haven Hospital. In 1952 she became a clinical instructor and supervisor in surgical nursing at Burbank Hospital in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. She was then appointed director of in-service education and assistant director of nursing at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

This mood did not last, however, due to the Chinese Communists. Students were drafted, supplies hard to come by, propaganda against the US intensified, and eventually, Poole was placed under house arrest in 1950. She fled in May 1950 and returned to the United States.

In 1948 she left for China aboard the SS General M. C. Meigs, accompanied by a cook stove, one hundred yards of screening, a crate of jeep parts, and a nursing mannequin dubbed "Mrs. Chase" which weighed 289 pounds and was in a 3' x' 3' x' 8' waterproof wooden box. Mrs. Chase was intended to replace a nursing mannequin brought to the school thirty years earlier by Nina Gage. Upon arrival in Hong Kong, Mrs. Chase presented a puzzle for customs officials, but eventually she was allowed to depart with Poole by train to Changsha. The nursing students were delighted with Mrs. Chase, posing for photographs with the mannequin and even dressing her in pajamas and slippers and having her act out a welcome address.

In 1944, with funding from the Cadet Nurse Corps, she began her studies at the Yale School of Nursing. After training as an advanced nurse clinician in medical-surgical nursing, she earned a master's degree from Yale in 1947.

Drusilla Rageu Poole (March 5, 1921 – December 11, 1981) was an American nurse and educator. She was a nursing educator in China before joining the United States Army Nurse Corps, eventually becoming director of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing (WRAIN).

Drusilla Rageu Poole was born on March 5, 1921 in Cornersville, Tennessee, the daughter of John Poole, a barber. She attended Martin Junior College in Pulaski, Tennessee, then Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville, where she graduated with an A.B. in 1942.