Died 1952 | ||
Olga Stastny (1878-1952) was the first female Czech physician in Nebraska. She graduated from the University of Nebraska's medical school in 1913. In January 1919 she joined the American Women's Hospitals in France, where she served as an anesthesiologist. In June of that year she accepted an offer to chair the Department of Hygiene and Social Service in the Social Service Training School of Prague, which she had been asked to do by Alice Masaryková. While in Czechoslovakia she founded a child welfare station and helped with a survey on nurses in Prague, as well as assisting with a campaign against tuberculosis that was sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation (and helped by Alice Masaryková's organizing) in 1919. She also lectured about her past work as an obstetrician, and as chair of the Health Department of the YMCA went around the country lecturing on preventive medicine and sexual hygiene. She also lectured to teenage girls about femininity, how a moral life was important to the health of the country, and the role of modern women, all at the request of the Slovak Ministry of Education. In 1921 her son Robert died in an accident and she returned to the United States because of this. She later worked for the American Women's Hospitals in Smyrna, and was appointed Director of the Quarantine Station on Macronissi Island, before leaving Greece due to acquiring malaria. The government of Greece awarded her the Order of George I.
In 1923 and 1924 she lectured throughout the United States. In 1924 she was elected as a delegate to the International Medical Women's Conference. In 1929 she was appointed president-elect of the Women's National Medical Association. In 1975 she was elected to the Nebraska Women’s Hall of Fame.