American nursing : a history of knowledge, authority, and the meaning of work
Record details
- ISBN: 9780801895647
- ISBN: 0801895642
- ISBN: 9780801895654
- ISBN: 0801895650
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Physical Description:
print
xviii, 251 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm - Publisher: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, ©2010.
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Formatted Contents Note: | Nursing and physicians in nineteenth-century Philadelphia -- Competence, coolness, courage, and control -- They went nursing, in early twentieth-century America -- Wives, mothers, and nurses -- Race, place, and professional identity -- A tale of two associations : White and African American nurses in North Carolina -- Who is a nurse? |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Nursing United States History History of Nursing Nurse's Role history History, 19th Century History, 20th Century United States |
Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at Kirtland Community College.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kirtland Community College Library | RT 4 .D36 2010 | 30775305510753 | General Collection | Available | - |
Summary:
This original interpretation of the history of nursing in the United States captures the many ways women reframed the most traditional of all gender expectations, that of caring for the sick, to create new possibilities for themselves, to renegotiate the terms of their life experiences, and to reshape their own sense of worth and power. For much of modern U.S. history, nursing was informal, often uncompensated, and almost wholly the province of female family and community members. This began to change at the end of the nineteenth century when the prospect of formal training opened for women doors that had been previously closed. Nurses became respected professionals, and becoming a formally trained nurse granted women a range of new social choices and opportunities that eventually translated into economic mobility and stability. In this book the author looks closely at this history, using a new analytic framework and archival sources, and finds complex, multiple meanings in the individual choices of women who elected a nursing career. New relationships and social and professional options empowered nurses in constructing consequential lives, supporting their families, and participating both in their communities and in the health care system. Narrating the experiences of nurses, she captures the possibilities, power, and problems inherent in the different ways women defined their work and lived their lives. For scholars in the history of medicine, nursing, and public policy, those interested in the intersections of identity, work, gender, education, and race, and nurses.