by Joan E. Lynaugh, PhD, FAAN

Eleanor C. Lambertsen, who died at age 82 on March 30, 1998, was a long time and very important advisor, supporter and friend to the Center. We turned to her often for her experienced counsel and insights into the vagaries of nursing and health are. Only during the very last years of her life, when Parkinson’s disease did finally slow her down, was Eleanor anything but forceful, interested, informed and ready to go. And, even then, when she could no longer travel, she wanted to know what we would be doing next and continued her keen interest in history.

Eleanor was well aware that her career spanned some of the most hectic times and far-reaching changes in nursing’s history. She believed she was lucky to live and be in nursing during those times. And, of course, she will be remembered for her own deep involvement in some of nursing’s most far reaching and controversial changes. After her 1938 graduation from Overlook Hospital School of Nursing in Summit, New Jersey, Eleanor practiced and taught there for nearly ten years. For four years she directed the school of nursing and hospital nursing service. She also did a brief stint as director of the Overlook Hospital before heading off to Teachers’s College, Columbia University where she earned her bachelor’s, master of arts and doctorate in education.

At Teacher’s College she was tapped by its nursing education director, R. Louise McManus, to conduct an ‘experiment in reorganizing hospital nursing’ funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The study tested and promoted the concept which came to be called team nursing. Eleanor looked back on those years from 1950 to 1957 with pleasure. Showing what well educated nurses with control over their practice could do to improve patient care filled her with enthusiasm. Later, she spent four years with the American Hospital Association as Director of their Division of Nursing. She felt that offered her a great education and opportunity to obtain a national and international view of health care. She spent the 1960s at Teacher’s College, rising to the rank of professor and directing the Division of Nursing Education and then the Division of Health Services, Sciences and Education. In 1970 she moved to Cornell University-New York Hospital School of Nursing as Dean and Professor, remaining there until the School closed in 1979. She served as Senior Associate Director and Director of Nursing at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center for the rest of her career.

Beginning about 1960 Eleanor could be found on virtually every important committee studying or recommending about nursing. I will list only a few. She worked on Ital Toward Quality in Nursing ital (1963), the Surgeon General’s Report that led to The Nurse Training Act, the forerunner of more than thirty years of funding for nursing via the Division of Nursing in the US Public Health Service. She was a member of Elliot Richardson’s (Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare) Committee to Study Extended Roles for Nursing (1971) which recommended federal support for nurse practitioners and other specialized forms of nursing practice. She was Secretary of the National Commission for the Study of Nursing and Nursing Education which put out the "Lysaught" Report in 1970. At the same time, Eleanor was very active in New York City and New York State health care politics.

I spoke with Eleanor at length in 1989. Her reflections on nursing impressed me with their cogency and candor and I will sample them here. Ever convinced of the efficacy and importance of the well-educated nurse in patient care, she believed the professional nurse (team leader) supported by assistants (associate degree nurses and aides) and working in close proximity with physicians was the key to patient survival and prompt recovery. When asked what went wrong with her own patient care reform efforts of the 1950s she replied with characteristic force, ..."the whole thing got bastardized. We didn’t move fast enough in baccalaureate education." She said pressures to replace hospital diploma schools fueled the growth of the associate degree nurse idea. But, the problem was, she argued, that comparable effective support for baccalaureate education wasn’t there, leaving a clinical leadership vacuum which was filled by less well prepared nurses. On the other hand, Eleanor was cheered by the growth of critical care nursing, nurse-midwifery and the nurse practitioner movement. Her credo was "any of us [in nursing] has to have a base of scholarship to stay alive."

We spoke of the harsh working environment ambitious women confronted in the fifties and later. Eleanor’s formula was "be a woman and be looked at as a lady ...but [be sure they know] you have a brain and a dagger at your belt," implying she was always ready to use both. She fondly recalled the closeness and mutual support among nursing leaders of the time. Speaking of the vital importance of making and sustaining contacts with people across the spectrum of health care, she reiterated her belief in the importance of appearance and felt that nurses [as underdogs] had to be self conscious about the personal impression they made.

During this long conversation Eleanor radiated enthusiasm and, it is not too strong to say, love for nursing. After more than fifty years of effort and not a few disappointments, she still thought nursing was one of the world’s best ideas. This seems to me to be a generous legacy for us to remember her by.

Quotations are all from a taped and transcribed interview at 500 East 77th Street, New York NY on December 13, 1989.