Reeling in the Years: A Look at Nursing History Archive

The big nurses' rally by National Nurses United in Washington on 12 May 2010 means a lot. The extraordinary, almost surreal situation in which nurses have to take to the streets to push for patient safety is based largely on the fact that large numbers of people with six figure jobs can't be bothered to do those jobs. That's across the board, from licensing authorities to state governments to Washington. The sheer insanity of this situation is lost on nobody ... More »

Meet Mrs. Celeste Brady. A couple of times a year, my husband flies to Rochester, New York to visit Celeste, who happens to be his first cousin, twice removed. What I never knew, until now, is that Celeste is a nurse. A retired nurse, but once a nurse, always a nurse. Celeste is 103 years old. All this time I've had a fantastic source of nursing history right in my own family and did not even know it! *****... More »

In 1965, while I was meeting the challenges of third grade, amassing a collection of Beatle cards and a year before I would meet "Cherry Ames", a revolution was brewing in the nursing profession. Rural areas needed primary care providers. Basic pediatric care was sparse, at best. Physicians were leaving primary care in increasing numbers for specialized areas. The increasing availability of coverage due to Medicare and Medicaid increased the demand, but who could ... More »

In a previous post, we looked at some interesting tidbits regarding nursing uniforms. This ad looks as though it comes from the 1960s. It was the last time you would see a nurse in head to toe white. ***** Society was undergoing massive changes in the '60s and '70s and so was the nursing profession. Nursing education was moving into the academic arena. Women were looking at their place and role in society.... More »

One of the nice aspects of my job is that I get to work with nurses from all education backgrounds, from ADN all the way up to PhD. One colleague in particular will have a PhD, with her focus on nursing history. Could I get luckier than that? Not only did she inspire me to go on with my education, but she is a wealth of information on everything nursing. I had the pleasure of reading one of her papers, ... More »

I do a lot of research for my Nursing Jobs.org columns. This was a gem of a find! Think nursing history is boring? Take a look at this "mission statement": "...Nursing history is not an ornament to be displayed on anniversary days, nor does it consist of only happy stories to be recalled and retold on special occasions. Nursing history is a vivid testamony, meant to incite, instruct and inspire today's nurses as they bravely trod ... More »

She decided to be a nurse at the age of eighteen. She worked in the New England Hospital for Women and Children until she was accepted at the nursing school. She was thirty-three years old. She was a student of the first professional nursing school in the United States. Out of her class of forty-two, she was one of only four who graduated from the sixteen-month course of study. If that alone was not enough to distinguish Mary Eliza Mahoney, she ... More »

Emily Morgan, RN is not widely known. A Google search turns up a few comments about her role as the "diphtheria nurse" in the 1925 Nome, Alaska outbreak. The story of how dog teams raced lifesaving antitoxin to the ice-bound village - sledding over 1000 miles in five days - is legendary. It is still celebrated as the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. There is a statue of the lead dog in Central Park. There is no ... More »

Did you know that physicians were hesitant to allow nurses to measure blood pressures? In fact, nurses did not routinely use stethoscopes for blood pressure auscultation until the 1960s! Lest anyone mistake the nurse's stethoscope for the doctor's device, they were called "assistoscopes" or "nurse-o-scopes" and made in lightweight pastels. By differentiating between the two, the appearance of nursing overlapping medicine was minimized. At the time of its introduction, the cuff represented a massive change in ... More »

Guys in nursing? No big deal, right? I had four guys in my class back in 1976 and it certainly didn't strike me as unusual. I have worked with male nurses in intensive care units and emergency departments throughout my career. I started wondering. When did men decide to enter the nursing profession? The answer blew me away. ***** Florence Nightengale may be considered a pioneer in modern nursing, but long before Florence wrote her "Notes on Nursing", there ... More »