An engaging study of the dilemmas faced by American nursing, which examines the ideology, practice, and efforts at reform of both trained and untrained nurses in the years between 1850 and 1945. Ordered to Care provides an overall history of nursing's development and places that growth within the context of topical questions raised by women's history and the social history of health care. Building upon extensive use of primary and quantitative data, the author creates a collective portrait of nursing, from the work of the individual nurse to the political efforts of its organizations. Dr Reverby contends that nursing's contemporary difficulties are caused by its historical obligation to care in a society that refuses to value caring. She examines the historical consequences of this critical dilemma and concludes with a discussion of why nursing will have to move beyond its obligation to care, and what the implications of this change would be for all of us.

In 1886, Newark City Hospital opened a training school for nurses in New Jersey. With the dawn of a new century women began to demand rights that had been denied them, and nurses too demanded changes in health care and higher education. For the first time, On Duty offers a highly readable account of the struggle for professional autonomy by New Jersey nurses and reveals how their political and legislative battles mirrored the struggle of women throughout the country to redefine their roles in society.

First multi-year cumulation covers six years: 1965-70.

Traveling the Life of Elinor Gregg, R.N.

Named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2001 by Choice! Why turn to the past when attempting to build nursing's future?...To make good decisions in planning nursing's future in the context of our complex health care system, nurses must know the history of the actions being considered, the identities and points of view of the major players, and all the stakes that are at risk. These are the lessons of history." -- from the Introduction This book presents nursing history in the context of problems and issues that persist to this day. Issues such as professional autonomy, working conditions, relationships with other health professionals, appropriate knowledge for education and licensure, gender, class, and race are traced through the stories told in this volume. Each chapter provides a piece of the puzzle that is nursing. The editors, all noted nurse historians and educators, have carefully made selections from the best that has been published in the nursing and health care literature.

This collection of ten essays by leading scholars in the social history of medicine provides a window into the world of the hospital, exploring the increasing complexity of both its internal and external dynamics as well as the relationship between the two. An introductory essay describes and evaluates the shifting balance between the hospital's moral and medical purposes, tracing the social, technical, physical, and medical developments that have continually shaped the image and activities of the general hospital from 1800 to the 1980s. Part One of the book places American general hospitals in the larger context of their regional, ethnic, religious, and racial communities. It contains four essays, including two case studies of local hospitals-one urban, the other rural-in transition, a photographic essay of life in community hospitals, and an account of the attempt to move black hospitals into the mainstream during the years 1920 to 1945. Part Two focuses on the professional communities within the hospital, Four essays explore the impact of technology on the modern hospital, science and the nursing profession, the changing education of hospital administrators, and the coming of age, in the 1960s, of the first hospital workers' union. A concluding article addresses crucial public policy issues and consider s prospects for the future of the American general hospital.