ISSN 1049-2259
Fall 2014, Vol. 26, No. 2
COVER STORY
CELEBRATING MERCY DOUGLASS SCHOOL OF NURSING
IN THIS EDITION
NEW COLLOQUIUM SERIES 2014 FELLOWS CENTER SEMINAR SERIES
Barbara Bates Center for The Study of The History of Nursing University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
2 The Chronicle - Barbara Bates Center for The Study of The History of Nursing The Barbara Bates Center for The Study of The History of Nursing was established in 1985 to encourage and facilitate historical scholarship on health care history and nursing in the United States. Part of the Center’s mission is to maintain resources for research to improve the quality and scope of historical scholarship on nursing, and to disseminate new knowledge on nursing history through educational programs, conferences, publications, seminars and inter-disciplinary collaboration.
News from the Center CYNTHIA CONNOLLY MAKES HISTORY WITH AAHM AWARD
Current projects at the Center include studies of the role of nurses in health care, the history of hospitals, the forces shaping child health care delivery, the nursing workforce and the construction of nurses’ personal and professional lives. The Center also continues to collect, process, and catalogue an outstanding collection of primary historical materials. Center Hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 am to 4:00 PM. Scholars planning to conduct research at the Center should e-mail nhistory@nursing.upenn.edu or call 215-898-4502. Our Center staff will respond with a description of the scope and content of relevant materials in the various collections.
Center Advisory Board Neville Strumpf, Chair Ellen D. Baer Susan Behrend Dorothy del Bueno Hannah Henderson Sandra Lewenson Joan Lynaugh Marian Matez Annemarie McAllister Elise Pizzi Rosalyn Watts Mark Frazier Lloyd (consultant) Gates Rhodes (consultant) Robert Aronowitz (consultant) Center Directors Julie Fairman, PhD, RN, FAAN, Director Barbra Mann Wall, PhD, RN, FAAN Associate Director Jean C. Whelan, PhD, RN, Assistant Director Joan E. Lynaugh, PhD, RN, FAAN, Director Emerita Center Fellows J. Margo Brooks-Carthon, PhD, CRNP Cynthia Connolly, PhD, RN, FAAN Patricia D’Antonio, PhD, RN, FAAN, Julie Solchaski, PhD, RN, FAAN, Ann Marie Walsh Brennan, PhD, RN Center Staff Jessica Clark, MA, Archivist Tiffany Collier, MA, Center Administrator Ginny Cameron, Volunteer Thora Williams, Volunteer
Cynthia Connolly (r) joined by Historians Janet Golden, PhD and John Burnham, PhD at 2014 AAHM Awards, May 10, 2014 in Chicago, Illinois
Congratulations are in order for Center Fellow Cynthia Connolly, PhD, RN, PNP, FAAN who received the 2014 J. Worth Estes Prize from the American Association for the History of Medicine along with Historian Janet Golden and Benjamin Schneider for their 2012 article “‘A Startling New Chemotherapeutic Agent’”: Pediatric Infectious Disease and the Introduction of Sulfonamides at Baltimore’s Sydenham Hospital.” The article examined pediatric patient records from Syndenham Hospital in order to explore the adoption of sulfa drugs in pediatrics. It also discusses how clinicians dealt with questions of dosing and side effects and the impact of the sulfonamides on two diagnoses in children: meningococcal meningitis and pneumonia. The care of infants and children with infectious diseases made demands on physicians and nurses that differed from those facing clinicians treating adult patients. The research in the article demonstrates the need to distinguish between pediatric and adult medical history. It suggests that the new therapeutics demanded more intense bedside care and enhanced laboratory facilities, and as a result paved the way for the adoption of penicillin. Finally, it argues that patient records and the published medical literature must be examined together in order to gain a full understanding of how transformations in medical practice and therapeutics occur. Connolly is the first nurse to receive AAHM’s Estes Prize.
BARBRA MANN WALL GIVES KEYNOTE AT JAPAN EVENT This February Center Associate Director Barbra Mann Wall, PhD, RN, FAAN, gave the keynote address at Nursing Research in Disasters: The Possibilities and Promises in Kobe, Japan. The event also served as the launch of the new journal Health Emergency and Disaster Nursing (HEDN). As the Editor-in-Chief for the journal, Wall will work with a wide varity of established scholars inside and outside the field of nursing in order continued on next page
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tics, and Nursing Practice. 14 (3-4): 133141, DOI:10.1177/1527154413520389. Fairman, J.A., Meyer, D. (2014). White Paper: Summary of the 2013 Community College Presidents' Meeting and Progress in the Year Since It Was Convened. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 0, 1-12. MacLean, L., Hassmiller, S., Shaffer, F., Rohrbaugh, K., Collier, T., & Fairman, J. A. (2014). Scale, Causes, and Implications of the Primary Care Nursing Shortage. Annual Review of Public Health 35 (25) 1-25.15. Barbra Mann Wall, PhD, RN, FAAN
to contribute to new research on disaster prevention and regeneration by bringing the wisdom of nursing science together with other disciplines. HEDN is the official English-language journal of the Disaster Nursing Global Leader Program (DNGL). The DNGL graduate program was created in order to facilitate innovative research and develop theories which can be applied to nursing practices in cooperation with other professionals in related disciplines. The program hopes to contribute to the promotion of human security through educating nurses on the disasters and equipping students with expert problem solving skills and a comprehensive international framework. For more information about HEDN, please visit htt://hedn.jp.
GRANTS Dr. Julie Sochalski received the Trustee Council of Penn Women’s 2014 Summer Research Fellowship. Doctoral student Amanda Mahoney received the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Nursing Doctoral Student Research Award for “Nurses and the SocioTechnical System of Medical Research in U.S. Hospitals, 1940-1965.” Doctoral student Briana Ralston was awarded the Office of Nursing Research grant from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.
Several faculty members continue work on on-going grants. Dr. J. Margo Brooks Carthon continues working on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Nurse Faculty Scholars Program, for her study entitled "Patient and Nurse Perspectives of Hospital Readmission Disparities". Dr. Julie Fairman continues work on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s “Expanding access to health care by removing APRN practice barriers: lessons from Pennsylvania” grant and the RWJ Campaign for Action research manager – year 2 project. She also continues work on the $20 million RWJF Future of Nursing Scholars Program Grant. Dr. Jean Whelan continues work on the Benjamin & Mary Siddons Measey Foundation’s Colloquium Series, “Enduring Issues in American Health Care: New Dialogues for the Present Using the Past,” as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities’, Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions, and the University of Pennsylvania, Provost's Excellence through Diversity Grant.
PUBLICATIONS D’Antonio, P. (2014). Lessons learned: Nursing and health demonstration projects in New York City, 1920-1935. Policy, Poli-
Fairman, J.A. Setting the Stage (2014). The Future of Health Care’s Past: Symposium in Honor of Joan E.Lynaugh. Nursing History Review 22: 95-101. Kutney-Lee A., Melendez-Torres G.J., McHugh M.D., Wall B.M. (2014). Distinct enough? A national examination of Catholic hospital affiliation and patient perceptions of care. Health Care Manage ment Rev. 2014 Apr Jun;39(2):134-44. doi: 10.1097/HMR.0b013e31828dc491. Wall, B.M. (2014). Review of Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850-1920, by Anne M. Butler, Journal of the Civil War Era, 4 (1), 139-141. Ralston, B. (2014). Book review of: Racial Innocence: Performing Racial Innocence from Slavery to Civil Rights. Nursing History Review 22: 188-189.
PRESENTATIONS Brooks Carthon, J.M. “Diverse Enough? What the Legacy of a Black Nursing Trailblazer Can Teach About the Future of Diversity in Nursing.” Invited Speaker at the MLK Symposium for Social Change. Sponsored by the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing. Jan. 30, 2014. Claire Fagin Hall, University of Pennsylvania D’Antonio, P. “The Interconnected Histories of Nursing Education, Profescontinued on next page
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sionalism, and Research.” Keynote speaker at the Inaugural Scientific International Nursing College Conference, King Khalid University, March, 2014. Abha, Saudi Arabia. D’Antonio, P. “Nursing Career Pathways in the United States.” Inaugural Scientific International Nursing College Conference, King Khalid University, March 2104. Abha, Saudi Arabia. D’Antonio, P. Speaker at the Contemporary Nursing Leadership Symposium, Asir Cental Hospital, March 2104. Abha, Saudi Arabia. D’Antonio, P. “Histories of Interprofessional Practice and Education.” American Association for the History of Medicine, May 2014. Chicago, Illinois. D’Antonio, P. “In Each Others’ Eyes: Black and White Nurses in North Carolina, 1920-1950.” Imaging the African-American Nurse, MLK Symposium for Social Change, Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, January, 2014. Philadelphia, PA. Wall, B.M. “Historical Roots of Holistic Nursing.” Keynote speaker at the Helen Erickson Endowed Lecture, University of Texas, April, 2014. Austin, TX. Wall, B.M. “Women in the Civil War: Nursing—Professional & Otherwise.”
Keynote speaker, The Inaugural Bernard Behrend, MD, Lecture, College of Physicians, April, 2014. Philadelphia, PA.
Dr. Julie Sochalski was appointed to the National Quality Forum Health Workforce Committee.
Whelan, J.C. “Through a Different Lens: Philadelphian African American Nurses, 1895-1960.” University of Pennsylvania, MLK Symposium for Social Change Event, Imaging the African-American Nurse, January, 2014, Philadelphia, PA.
Dr. Julie Sochalski was appointed to the Sigma Theta Tau International’s 20132015 Advisory Council on Policy.
APPOINTMENTS AND OTHER NEWS Dr. Linda Maldonado and doctoral students Katharine Smith, Kathleen Nishida, Amanda Mahoney, and Briana Ralston participated in Penn’s Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and Penn Women’s Center’s “Histories of Nursing: Reframing the Power in Women’s Spaces” panel discussion, February, 2014. Philadelphia, PA. Dr. J. Margo Brooks Carthon was appointed to the Advisory Taskforce on Diversity and Cultural Competence, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Dr. J. Margo Brooks Carthon was appointed to the Advisory Commiteee for the Center for Minority Serving Institutions, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education.
Dr. Julie Sochalski represented the American Academy of Nursing at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s Nursing Roundtable. Dr. Jean Whelan was featured in The Woodlands Cemetery blog, “Trailblazers, Yesterday & Today: Alice Fisher and Jean C. Whelan, PhD., R.N.” Dr. Jean Whelan contributed to Philly. com’s blog, “The Public’s Health,” which can be found at: Whelan, J.C. (2014, April 16). Visualizing Philadelphia's public health nurses at work: A century of photos [Web log post]. Retrieved from: http://www. philly.com/philly/blogs/public_health/ Visualizing-Philadelphias-public-healthnurses-at-work-A-century-of-photos.html. Dr. Julie Sochalski was appointed to Faculty Search Committee, Chair 2014-15; Chair-elect 2013-14. Doctoral student Amanda Mahoney was appointed the Measey ColloquiumBates Center Fellow.
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cover story
Celebrating Mercy Douglass Alumni by Tiffany Hope Collier
O
n April 23, 2014, the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at Penn Nursing hosted a remarkable event in honor of the alumni from the Mercy Douglass Hospital School of Nursing, which was a prestigious Historically Black Health Care Institution. The event brought together over 80 participants, including nearly 30 alumni from Mercy Douglass. In addition to honoring the alumni group, the tea was an opportunity to highlight the archival and photo collections from Mercy Douglass School of Nursing, which are currently housed at the Bates Center. A commitment to preserving the rich diversity of the nursing profession is at the forefront of the Center’s strategic goals. As one of the oldest collections currently held at the Center, the Mercy Douglass Hospital and School of Nursing collection provides key research and historical resources on black nurses in the US and the segregation and pervasive inequity that existed in the health care system. As previously noted in the Spring 2014 newsletter, we are currently in the early stages of digitizing the Mercy Douglass Hospital and Alumni Association records and are seeking funding to complete this work and present it in an online exhibition. In this edition of The Chronicle, we take a behind the scenes look into how the tea came to be. Before the idea of a tea or special event in honor of Mercy Douglass was presented, we simply wanted to contact the alumni association to thank them for their continued support and monetary contributions to the Bates Center over the years. The Center’s relationship with the Mercy Douglass Alumni Association can be officially traced to September 25, 1985 when former Philadelphia General Hospital School of Nursing Administrator Stephanie A. Stachniewicz corresponded with then Director of the newly formed Center for the Study of the History of Nursing Joan Lynaugh to suggest that Joan contact then Assistant Professor of Nursing at La Salle College Mabel H. Morris, who was also an alumna of Mercy Douglass. Eventually Joan was able to get in touch with both Morris and another woman named Lela Bethel. Through her discussions with Lela Bethel, who was at the time secretary of the Alumni Association, Joan was able to gain valuable historical insight into the history of Mercy Douglass, its importance to the black community of Philadelphia, and the deep and lasting connections between the nurses and doctors. In a letter dated September 16, 1986, Joan spoke of the difficulties that exist for historians when “the basis of our work, i.e. the records, correspondence, photos, and journals, remain outside of the mainstream of archives and libraries.” She went on to say that the lack of preservation was especially detrimental to recording the history of minority nurses. Through the years that the Center has held the records for the Mercy Douglass Hospital and School of Nursing records, they have been useful to a number of scholars. For instance, in her now definitive book on black nurses, Black Women in White, historian Darlene Clark Hine features several images from the Mercy Douglass collection, including a cover image from the Mercy Hospital Class of continued on next page
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Cover Story, continued
(l to r) Julie Fairman, Patricia D’Antonio, Barbara Savage, Jean Whelan, and Margo Brooks Carthon during the MLK symposium event “Imaging the African-American Nurse” held in January 2014
1930 (see page 15). Hine includes key background into the implications of the merger of Mercy Hospital and Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital that occurred in 1948. Hine also briefly speaks of Mercy Douglass’ “formidable” superintendent Lula G. Warlick, who was a graduate of Lincoln Hospital School of Nurses in New York. Warlick was a nurse supervisor at hospitals in Illinois and Missouri before her 1920 appointment at Mercy Hospital, and her extensive experience and temperament is credited with turning around a struggling nursing program by raising the educational standards and ultimately helping the school to achieve Class A status from the Pennsylvania State Board of Examiners. The strength of Lula Warlick is something mentioned by many of the Mercy Douglass alumni old enough to remember her. To say Warlick wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type would be an understatement. “She was a mean old lady” one alumni member recalled recently “mean, but effective.” Perhaps Warlick’s strong manner was in response to a system of segregation that placed undue pressure on administrators like her to be a testament to the race, exemplary figures that surpassed the limited expectations imposed on AfricanAmericans, particularly nurses, who at the time would have faced stereotypes of being
uneducated and lacking social graces. In other words, nursing was deemed to many the safe career choice for those that couldn’t hack it in a more respectable career. This faulty perception is one of the reasons why a brilliant writer like modernist Nella Larsen died in relative obscurity after a long career as a nurse. It is also why when you examine the lives of the alumni of Mercy Douglass, you find women who were determined to strive towards excellence in spite of the very real barriers faced in both their personal and professional lives. Depending on what generation a person is from, the notion of a segregated health care system will either seem like a faraway relic of a time marked by fear and ignorance, or it will remain a deeply ingrained memory, one whose scars are felt at all times. A tea in no way could ever heal those scars, and that wasn’t ever our intention. The Center’s work on Mercy Douglass is really about exposing as many people as possible to the history of health care, both the good and the ugly. We all celebrate the good parts - the modernization and the professionalization of health care workers and facilities which led to a greater quality of life for American citizens. The bad – the staggered health care infrastructure put in place that led to widespread inequity and health disparities
– is a history that needs to be examined in order to bring insight to the issues of today. The examination of these issues is how the idea of having an event for the alumni of Mercy Douglass began. The tea was the brainchild of Assistant Director Jean C. Whelan, who had an aha! moment at the hair salon that inspired her to apply for a grant to fund a digitization initiative to highlight the Mercy Douglass collection. Unfortunately, we didn’t get that grant, but it planted the seeds for doing some type of event for the alumni group. The idea of a tea continued to resonate primarily because in nurse training schools, both black and white, tea time was an important ritual; it was where friendships were formed, where budding nurses would commiserate and glean insights from their superiors. The Center also had success several years ago with a similar event honoring the alumni of the Episcopal School of Nursing. As the Center continued to pursue funding opportunities to digitize the Mercy Douglass collection, I worked diligently to track down the alumni group, initially with little success. Eventually I was able to get in contact with the Mercy Douglass alumni group Secretary Delores Brewer. It was with Delores’ urging that I went to their monthly meeting and spoke about the work at the Center and our idea to have this tea to thank them. While I went to the meeting to speak, I actually spent more time listening to the alumni share their lives. As a black woman I deal with the subtle vestiges of Jim Crow every day of my life. However, whatever trials I may endure, I will never face the sting of a blatant separate-but-equal life firsthand as many of the alumni from Mercy Douglass I have met have. Knowing that these women dealt with so many doors being slammed in their face, and somehow had the courage and strength to break down those doors anyway helped me to put into perspective why it was important to honor these women in whatever small way we could. In the months leading up to the tea, we were fortunate to work on the initial stages of digitizing the photographs of the Mercy Douglass Hospital and School of Nursing, thanks in large part to Jean Whelan receiving an Excellence in Diversity Grant from the University of Pennsylvania continued on page 15
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Tea time with mercy douglass alumni
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8 The Chronicle - Barbara Bates Center for The Study of The History of Nursing
2014 center fellows awarded The Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing is pleased to announce this year’s fellowship recipients: Lillian Brunner Fellowship for Historical Research in Nursing
Training of a New Professional Identity at the Pennsylvania Hospital School of Nursing for Men, 1914-1915.
Juliana Guisardi Pereira: Mary Adelaide Nutting and the Construction of Nursing Identity.
Kathleen Nishida: St. Luke’s College of Nursing Tokyo, Japan: The Interface of a Foreign Mission Project, an American Philanthropy, and the Development of Nursing in Japan, 1920-1940
Alice Fisher Society Fellowship for Historical Research in Nursing
Karen Buhler-Wilkerson Fellowship for Historical Research in Nursing
Chou Chuan-Chiang Yao (Caroline Yao): The Influences of Christianity on the Early Stage Development of Modern Nursing in China, 1920-1928.
Kylie Smith: The Idea of Trauma in the History of Mental Health Nursing: Theory and Practice after 1945.
Briana Ralston: Early Neonatal Intensive Care Nurses: An analysis of how nurses were involved in the development of neonatal intensive care through the collection of oral history interviews.
Ronen Segev: The Development of Military Nursing in Israel Between 1948-2000.
Phoebe Pollitt: The Role of Race in the Provision of Health Care in Appalachia in Early 20th Century America.
Rachel Elder: Making Men of Nurses, and Nurses of Men—Gender, Labor, and the
2014 Alice Fisher Fellow Caroline Yao (center) joined by (l to r) Jessica Clark, John Barbieri, Tiffany Hope Collier, Jean Whelan, Julie Fairman, and Pat D’antonio in Ellen D. Baer Reading Room
For over 20 years the Bates Center has offered fellowships and research awards of up to $5,000 to support historical research in nursing and health care. To learn more about fellowships at the Center, please visit www.nursing.upenn.edu/historyfellowships for more information.
BATES SEMINAR SERIES
2014-2015 Fall 2014
Spring 2015
1/27 - Briana Ralston 2/10 - Kylie Smith 2/25 - Jeffrey Womack 3/4 - Jenna Healey 3/18 - Kelly O'Donnell 4/1 - Annemarie McAllister 4/15 - Barbra Mann Wall 4/28 - Whitney Martinko visit www.nursing.upenn.edu/history for more information
9/10 - Ronen Segev 9/23 - Rachel Elder 10/8 - Karol Weaver 10/28 - Phoebe Pollitt 11/5 - Beth Linker 11/18 - Kathleen Nishida 12/3 - TBA
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2014 lillian brunner fellow report: Rachel elder
I
t was an honor to have been selected as one of the recipients of this year’s Lillian Sholtis Brunner Fellowship at the Barbara Bates Center for the History of Nursing. My interest in the history of nursing first developed as a new doctoral student in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of History and Sociology of Science, when I happened upon a 1920s era photograph of five white suited, bowtie-clad men standing in front of the historical Pennsylvania Hospital in downtown Philadelphia. I am not sure what it was about the sparsely populated image – whether the upright posture or fastidious uniform of these young men, the fact that I could not place them as physicians or medical residents, or indeed that their representation was decidedly separate from that of other medical staff – but I was nevertheless curious to learn more. I soon discovered that Philadelphia had “Only with the generous support and once been home to unparalleled resources of the Bates one of the country’s Center have I been allowed to trace few nursing schools this important and too long neglected for men between chapter in the history of nursing.” 1914 and 1965. With further research, I came to see that I had in fact stumbled upon a vital but mostly uncharted history about gender, nursing labor, and a historically specific attempt to forge a discrete professional identity for men through segregated nursing education in the first half of the twentieth century. Not least, I also came to appreciate that I had been working adjacent to the most prominent center for nursing history, and one of the richest repositories for source material in the world. Rachel Elder Over the past six years, I have pursued the fifty-year history of the Pennsylvania Hospital School of Nursing for Men whenever my dissertation schedule allowed. I happily attended Bates Center seminars, conducted research in the center’s archives, and even worked with faculty members, such as Patricia D’Antonio; yet invariably, I was forced to put the project aside in order to meet the various demands of my doctoral degree. Now, in the final year of my program, the Lillian Sholtis Brunner Fellowship has enabled me the time and funding to pursue this project in a focused manner. It is with gratitude and delight that I will return to the records at the Center and Pennsylvania Hospital Archives, work with the talented historians in the Bates Center, and present my research in an upcoming seminar. Only with the generous support and unparalleled resources of the Bates Center have I been allowed to trace this important and too long neglected chapter in the history of nursing.
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Center begins new colloquium series on enduring issues in health care
T
he Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing is pleased to announce the inauguration of a new colloquial series entitled Enduring Issues in American Health Care: New Dialogues for the Present Using the Past. The Series, which was generously funded by The Benjamin & Mary Siddons Measey Foundation. The series will consist of three colloquia held between September, 2014 and December 2015 and is a collaborative effort coordinated by Bates Center faculty members Jean Whelan and Cindy Connolly and Drexel University College of Medicine’s Steven J. Peitzman. This series will explore, contextualize, and illuminate the histories of medicine and nursing and the ways in which both professions evolved within a framework of interaction, separation, and collaboration between the years 1800 to 2000. The goal of this series is to bring together medical and nursing students, practitioners, educators, and scholars to discuss some of the most compelling historical issues faced by the two professions in delivering health care in the past. The first colloquial will be held in Claire M. Fagin Hall on Saturday, September 27, 2014 from 10AM-3PM. Entitled “Professionalizing Nursing and Medicine: the Early Years,” and features the following speakers: Steven J. Peitzman, MD, FACP, Professor of Medicine, Drexel University College of Medicine Philadelphia, Medical School, 1890s: The Future Appears as the Past Endures Patricia D’Antonio, PhD, RN, FAAN, Professor of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing Practicing nursing and medicine in late 19th century Philadelphia Jeffrey P. Brosco MD, PhD, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, University of Miami The Enduring Power of Place: Learning the Healing Arts, Then and Now with commentary by Barron Lerner, PhD, MD, Professor; Departments of Population Health and Medicine, New York University and Contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, and the Huffington Post Registration is free. Lunch will be provided. For more information on the September 27th event please visit www.nursing.upenn. edu/history. The second colloquial will take place on March 28, 2015. Additional information is forthcoming.
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2014 Lillian Brunner fellow report: Briana ralston
L
ittle work has been done to explore how neonatal intensive care and the units in which it is delivered developed in the “literature suggests that nurses played United States between important roles in the development and 1955 and 1982. During implementation of changing models of a time when incredible care for sick infants” changes were taking place in such broad American avenues such as civil rights, scientific advancement, and technological development, American healthcare was changing as well. Respiratory machines and methods of treatment fluctuated in the neonatal intensive care nurseries, but nurses put the ‘intensive care’ in intensive care units. This was also true in neonatal intensive care units. Primary and secondary literature suggests that nurses played important roles in the development and implementation of changing models of care for sick infants and the units in which that care was given. A Briana Ralston critical component of historical analysis of the development of neonatal intensive care is enriched by the voices of nurses and physicians who were involved in patient care during this time period. With this funding, I have begun interviews with physicians and nurses who were involved in the development of neonatal intensive care. This fellowship has allowed me to conduct oral history interviews, have them transcribed, and use them in my doctoral research. Dr. Barbra Mann Wall, Dr. Julie Fairman, and Dr. Cynthia Connolly have guided me and encouraged me as I have learned the rigor of engaging oral histories and discovered the joy they bring to my research and analysis. These interviews, stored in the Barbara Bates Center will also be available to future researchers and will continue to advance the state of nursing scholarship. Ultimately, these histories will enable the voices of those who played key roles in the development of intensive care for critically ill newborns between 1955 and 1982, to be a part of our analysis, consideration, and scholarly data.
2014 Lillian Brunner fellow report: Kathleen nishida
I
appreciate the support of the Lillian Brunner Fellowship, which has helped to facilitate the incidental expenses that occur with research and the costs of dissertation writing. My dissertation, The Americanled development of St. Luke’s College of Nursing Tokyo, Japan 1920-1948: the promotion of American ideals in nursing in the context of Christianizing and public health missions, deals with the contexts of Christianizing by the church and of promoting public health by the Rockefeller Foundation. Despite these two powerful influences, it was the leadership at St. Luke’s which drove nursing reform. This idea is evidenced in a statement by Alice St. John, an American nurse, and the first principal of the school of nursing. In a 1920 typescript of an article written for the Spirit of Missions, St. John writes: “it has been very stimulating to see the interest already awakened, not only in Tokyo, but throughout the country in the plan to open, as a Department of St. Luke’s, a modern School for Nurses based on American standards, with a three-years course of
scholarship was an important break from training.” This kind of language is seen a tradition in which histories were often repeatedly in statements made by Rudolf conducted by men, about male figures, Teusler, the physician director at St. Luke’s International Hospital and by St. “It was the leadership at st. lukes which John. This idea drove nursing reform” predated the school’s involvement with and often with a hagiographic quality. And the Rockefeller Foundation and although indeed, at St. Luke’s the Christianizing the American Church Mission recognized mission is quite apparent. But it is important the potential for the medical mission to now to go beyond the notion of cultural produce Christian converts, the intent to imperialism. As historian Julia Irwin points reform nursing at St. Luke’s clearly came out, the cultural imperialism narrative from the individual missionaries. often implies hierarchies and can in itself Current historical literature regarding be oppressive. The interactions of the health internationalism in the early American and Japanese nurses at St. twentieth century often interrogates Luke’s and the border crossings that they missionary activities in terms of their made in their quest to import an American potential for cultural imperialism. style of nursing would create roles and Megan Vaughan’s Curing Their Ills is leadership opportunities that had lifelong especially revealing for its consideration repercussions for many of these nurses. of missionaries’ biomedical discourse in the framing of disease. To her, their emphasis on both body and soul “was part of a program of social and moral engineering.” To be sure, this type of
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2014 alice fisher report: caroline yao
I
t was an honor to be awarded the 2014 Alice Fisher Fellowship offered by the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing. This fellowship allowed me to return to the Bates Center to follow up on my initial research trip in Fall 2013. On my first trip, I visited the libraries/archives of the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, Columbia University, Harvard University, and Princeton University, as well as the Presbyterian Historical Society during my sabbatical leave to gather information for my study on the influences of Christianity on the early stage development of modern nursing in China. The Barbara Bates Center was my first stop during my visit. The Center’s excellent reputation in the study of the history of nursing, rich resources and professional expertise, as well as warm hospitality and friendly atmosphere impressed me deeply. Studying at the Center has truly been a dream come true. The aim of my research is to analyze the Dr. Caroline Yao impact of Christianity on Chinese nursing development during 1920 - 1928. Modern nursing was introduced to China by Christian missionaries from the west in the late 19th Century. Missionary nurses and their work in shaping the Chinese nursing profession deserve our greater attention as we intend to know more about the roots of the core values of current nursing as well as the missionary enterprise. During the four weeks I stayed in Philadelphia, I researched archives from the Barbara Bates Center, Presbyterian Historical Society, and the Drexel University College of Medicine, which provided valuable first hand materials such as annual reports of hospitals and affiliated nursing schools, missionary physicians and nurses’ letters, diaries, notebooks, pictures and official documents. From those archives, I collected abundant useful information for my research such as missionary nurses’ family background, education and clinical training; missionary society’s policies, resources distribution as well as how missionary nurses kept their support under continuing war and riot of the country on the development of nursing profession. All of these served as a solid foundation in enriching, reconfirming and even correcting my research findings. The preliminary research results showed that Christianity has significant and comprehensive influences on the early development of Chinese nursing on ethics, education, clinical practicing, public health and administration. I presented my research findings at the Bates Center Seminar held on May 13, 2014. Participants including professors and students from nursing, history, and other fields, as well as staff from different hospitals provided very constructive feedback to my research. I am now in the process of reviewing the analysis of research findings and writing a paper on those findings. This research will be presented at conferences and submitted for publication in the near future. Since the early stages of the development of modern nursing in China was also impacted by other western countries, I will continue to research and look for collaborative opportunities with colleagues in the US. During my two brief visits at the Bates Center, I enjoyed friendly close interactions with the faculty and students very much. These inspiring and encouraging conversations and experiences were a cross-cultural exchange. I wish to thank Dr. Julie Fairman, Dr. Barbra Mann Wall, Dr. Cynthia Connolly and Dr. Jean C. Whelan as well as PhD students Kathleen Nishida and Naixue Cui for providing extremely helpful insights and suggestions for my research. In addition Tiffany Collier provided administrative support that made my stay at Penn much easier and more convenient. Finally, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to everyone at the Barbara Bates Center for enabling me to have such a wonderful and fruitful journey.
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THE BARBARA BATES CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF NURSING GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES ALL OF ITS SUPPORTERS FOR THEIR GENEROSITY
Donors June 30, 2013 to July 1, 2014 Dr. Linda H. Aiken Ms. Madalon M. Amenta Lucille Musser Arking Dr. Ellen Davidson Baer Dr. Nira Bartal Barbara Bates Estate Ms. Rita T. Beatty Mrs. Susan Weiss Behrend Mrs. Georgeanna M. Bittner Dr. Eleanor Crowder Bjoring Mrs. Marion Bryde Bogen Dr. Geertje Boschma Dr. Barbara Brodie Dr. Joy Buck Dr. Kathleen G. Burke Ms. Pamela Frances Cipriano Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm F. Crawford Dr. Anne J. Davis Dr. Katherine L. Dawley Dr. Doris S. Edwards Nurses Alumni Association of the Episcopal Hospital Dr. Marilyn E. Flood Ms. Jessica E. Flores Mrs. Sylvia Waltz Fuller Gaines Family Charitable Gift Fund Dr. Vanessa N. Gamble, MD Mr. William C. Garrow
Dr. Carol P. Germain Dr. Mary Eckenrode Gibson Mr. & Mrs. Donald E. Goad, Jr. Ms. Lydia M. Grebe Dr. Margaret J. Grey Ms. Carol L. Gross Dr. Gloria Hagopian Dr. Christine Hallett Ms. Donna E. Haney Mrs. Patricia A. Heffner Mrs. Beth Helwig Mrs. Hannah L. Henderson Ms. Christy Nye Hoover Mr. Vincent Hughes Ms. Concetta Ioppolo Hunt Mrs. Jacqueline M. Jerrehian Ms. Julie Karcis Ms. Jeanne J. Kiefner Dr. Norma M. Lang Mrs. Hilda J. Law Mrs. Shirley B. Layfield Ms. Gloria Lee Mrs. Helene B. Kuritz Levy Dr. Sandra B. Lewenson Dr. Ruth Lubic Mrs. Barbara Lund Dr. Joan E. Lynaugh Mrs. Barbara Barden Mason
Dr. Ruth McCorkle Mrs. Mary V. McDevitt Ms. Lana L. Miller Ms. Mary Alice Musser Ms. Maral Palanjian Steven J. Peitzman, MD Mrs. Annette Marie Pettineo Dr. Robert V. Piemonte Dr. Elizabeth A. Reedy Dr. Susan Reverby Mr. Theodore R. Robb Milton D. Rossman, MD Mrs. Mary T. Sarnecky Mrs. Jean Martin Spangler Dr. Rosemary A. Stevens Dr. Neville E. Strumpf Ms. Jean I. Swindler Mr. Jeffrey M. Toback Dr. Marion Burns Tuck Dr. Nancy M. Valentine Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Philadelphia Mrs. Norma J. Walgrove Dr. Barbra M. Wall Dr. Ann Marie Walsh-Brennan Dr. Mary McCormack Walton Mr. and Mrs. W. S. Watchman, Jr. Dr. Jean C. Whelan Mrs. Mary Jane Ziegler
The Bates Center thanks the University of Pennsylvania Archives and its director, Mark Frazier Lloyd, for their generous in-kind contributions of storage support.
Please visit www.nursing.upenn.edu/history to make a gift to the Bates Center or mail the donation card on page 9. Your generosity ensures that nursing historical research has a prosperous future.
14 The Chronicle - Barbara Bates Center for The Study of The History of Nursing
2014 karen buhler wilkerson fellow report: kylie smith
Dr. Kylie Smith
I
was absolutely thrilled and honored to be awarded the Karen BuhlerWilkerson fellowship for 2014. During my initial four weeks at the Center this summer I conducted research for my project, Trauma in the history of mental health nursing: Theory and practice after 1945. As a historian at the University of Wollongong in Australia, my interest is in the history of ideas, and how ideas about health have been constructed and negotiated over time. I am specifically concerned with how and why ideas about mental health have developed and the role of nursing theory and practice in this process. I wanted to trace the origins of the idea of trauma and show how it changed over time and what relationship initial conceptions of trauma in mental health nursing had with contemporary ideas, especially in relation to post traumatic stress. In my first visit to the Bates Center I have focused on the Hildegard Peplau records and Former Penn Nursing Dean Dorothy A. Mereness records. I will be returning to conduct additional research in 2015 on a number of holdings at the Bates Center, including: the papers of National Association of Hispanic Nurses founder Ildaura Murillo-Rohde, former Penn Nursing Dean Claire Fagin, author of
Hospitals, Paternalism, and the Role of the Nurse Joanne Ashley, Philadelphia General Hospital Librarian Edith Nunan and geropsychiatric nursing scholar Mary Starke-Harper records. In addition to accessing the wonderful archives at the Bates Center, I have also been able to access rare journal articles by a number of other nurses writing about mental health in the post war period. I didn’t expect to find documented accounts of trauma and nurses in the immediate post war period, but I did. What is also apparent is the prevalence and significance of the concept of ‘anxiety’. Mereness, writing in 1958, called this ‘our anxiety-riddled age’ and when Peplau, also in 1958, called mental health ‘the greatest social problem of our time’ I realized something broader was happening here than just the natural development continued on next page
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Cover Story, continued Office of the Provost. With these funds, we were able to hire two amazing work study students, Thando Ally and Karen Man (see Spring 2014 Chronicle) who were primarily responsible for scanning and attaching metadata to hundreds of images. As a preview to the tea, we also held a special event entitled “Imaging the African-American Nurse” in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Programs during the annual MLK Symposium on Social Change month of events. “Imaging the African-American Nurse” was an informative and interactive program that highlighted the roles, trials, and triumphs of black nurses and featured talks by Center faculty Patricia D’Antonio, Margo Brooks-Carthon, and Jean Whelan with noted Historian and Africana Studies Professor Barbara Savage serving as moderator. The event also included several images from the Mercy Douglass School of Nursing on display at the Center. One of the ways that we spread the word about the tea was through social media, which we used to highlight the digitized images and the collection as a whole. Both Jean and I also continued to communicate with Delores Brewer and the alumni association in order to get the word out to as many people as we could. Working with a limited budget proved to be a challenge, which is why we were thankful to receive the support of Penn Nursing’s Office of the Dean and the Office of Diversity and Cultural Affairs. Other supporters included the Philadelphia Foundation, in particular Sylvia Spivey who has worked closely with the Mercy Douglass alumni for their scholarship fund, as well as several members of the Center’s advisory board. Penn Nursing’s Office of Institutional Advancement provided
beneficial marketing and communications support which allowed us to promote the event to the local media, including WHYY’s Newsworks radio program. Barbara Savage and the Department of Africana Studies also provided support for the event. In addition, the event planning expertise of Janet Tomcavage and Shaunna Lee allowed us to have an elegant and festive occasion. With the tea days away, I had a bit of anxiety that no one would show up because RSVPs were running frighteningly low. Both Delores and Jean assured me that people would show up and that we just had to continue to pour all of our efforts into making sure that the tea was a good event for all. This Field of Dreams outlook turned out to be warranted as we not only met the expected turnout, but exceeded it. On a personal note, I can say that the one moment that moved me deeply was when Mercy Douglass Alumni Association President Elizabeth AK Williams spoke of a time when a hospital in Central PA refused to hire her, telling her explicitly that they would not employ a person of color in the position. I know that hospital well because I, and most of my family, was born there. Another touching moment almost didn’t happen because it was a last minute change to the program. Jean decided to have one of the Center doctoral students, Kathleen Nishida, speak briefly to alumni present and find out about all they have accomplished in the years since graduating. It is not an exaggeration to say that all of the alumni present were trailblazers in some way – whether it was integrating a hospital, or serving in the armed forces, or even traveling the world and providing health care to needy children in impoverished villages – every woman had an amazing story to tell and those stories need to be told.
Mercy Hospital Class of 1930 from cover of Black Women in White by Darlene Clark Hine
Nearly 25 years ago, Joan Lynaugh wrote a letter seeking funding to process the Mercy Douglass collection. In that letter, Joan spoke of the “urgency” in preserving the Mercy Douglass collection while “these generous women are available to us.” All of us at the Center are continuing this work today. Digitizing the Mercy Douglass collection, gathering oral histories, and presenting this work to a global audience is a key way that we can honor the alumni of Mercy Douglass and ensure that their legacy lives on. For more information about the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing and the Mercy Douglass School of Nursing collection, please visit www.nursing.upenn.edu/ history.
Wilkerson Fellow Report, continued of the specialization of mental health nursing. Many nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists wrote about the importance of the nurse in ‘preventative psychiatry’ and stressed the importance of public health and community nursing for the early detection and intervention of mental illness. Peplau herself was particularly concerned with what she called “problems in living” and she wrote about ways that nurses could deal with these in their every day practice in her seminal text ‘Interpersonal Relations in Nursing’. But beyond this text she was particularly concerned with the role of anxiety in modern life, its power to escalate into debilitating mental illness, and the connection between the needs of modern civilized democracies and the ability to control one’s own anxiety, and deal with one’s own ‘problems of living’. There is much in these ideas that resonate with contemporary social and psychiatric thinking which impact the development of nursing theory and practice in mental health. But these are also ideas emerging in a very particular time and context, that of the Cold War. Both Peplau and Mereness are explicit about that context. Additional research at the Rockefeller Archives in Sleepy Hollow, NY will allow me to further research the cold war context and start to consider its implications for contemporary mental health nursing theory and practice. More than this, I hope the project will demonstrate the central role of nurses in the development of not just human health, but their broader role in shaping family and social relations.
Barbara Bates Center for The Study of The History of Nursing
University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing Claire M. Fagin Hall (2U) 418 Curie Boulevard Philadelphia, PA 19104-4217 www.nursing.upenn.edu/history
CALENDAR ICOWHI 20th International Congress on Women’s Health 2014: “Beyond 2015: What Will it Take?” November 9 – 12, 2014, Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town, South Africa. ICOWHI, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of health, health care, and the well-being of women around the world, announces an international interdisciplinary conference. For additional information about the congress, please visit http:// icowhi2014.com/ SAHMS Seventeenth Annual Meeting, March 12 – 14, 2015, Jackson, MS. The Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science (SAHMS) invites paper proposals for its seventeenth annual meeting on March 12-14, 2015, in Jackson, MS, hosted by the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and the Mississippi State Medical Association. SAHMS welcomes papers on the history of medicine and science, broadly construed to encompass historical, literary, anthropological, philosophical and sociological approaches to health care and science including race, disabilities and
gender studies. For further information about the program or SAHMS please contact the Program Chair, Philip Wilson, wilsonpk@ etsu.edu. http://www.sahms.net/. The American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM) 88th Annual Meeting, New Haven, Connecticut, April 30May 3, 2015. Please visit the AAHM website, www.histmed.org for more information.
in sharing new scholarship that addresses events, issues, and topics pertinent to the history of the global nursing profession, its clinical practice, and the field of nursing history. Individual papers, posters, and panel presentations are featured at the conference. The deadline for abstracts is January 31, 2015. Additional information about the conference can be obtained at www.aahn.org
ICN 2015 Congress: Global Citizen, Global Nursing, June 19-23, 2015. The ICN 2015 Congress This international gathering of thousands of nurses will explore the importance of cross-cultural understanding and global cooperation in nursing. The Congress will also be the venue for ICN Network meetings. For more information please visit http://www.icn2015.ch/en/. The American Association for the History of Nursing (AAHN) and the University College Dublin School of Nursing Midwifery and Health Services are co-sponsoring the Association’s 32nd Annual Conference, September 17-20, 2015, in Dublin, Ireland. The conference provides a forum for researchers interested
The Chronicle is published twice a year Editor: Tiffany Collier, MA Editorial Assistant: Elisa Stroh