[1] After completing her training, MacDowell opened her own private hospital called ‘Windarra' at Toorak in Melbourne.

She was sent to a Red Cross hospital in Serbia, where she nursed until early 1916 when the German army overwhelmed the Serbian forces and she was evacuated back to England.

[2] Back in England, MacDowell joined the Millicent Fawcett Union, under the British Red Cross, and later in 1916 returned to Europe as the matron of an 80-bed hospital in Volhynia, Russia.

MacDowell stayed in England and began working for as an Investigator for the British Branch of the Board of Pensions Commissions, initially for the Canadian government and then for the Australian.

She later returned to Australia and worked with the first boys to immigrate to Sydney under the Barnados child migration scheme.