This year the Center received the following thought-provoking letter from Edith P. Lewis, RN, MN, FAAN, former Editor of Nursing Research, AJN, and Nursing Outlook. Aside from the immediate salient points the writer makes, the letter also spawned the idea that by sharing our members' thoughts, we could make The Chronicle a better vehicle for dialogue. We invite our constituency to write us about nursing history issues, their recollections of the past, and opinions you would enjoy getting out of your system. We thank Edith Lewis for her wonderful letter and for permission to use it to launch this experiment.
Dear Dr. Buhler-Wilkerson:
As I enclose this year’s contribution to the Center, I find that I can no longer resist commenting on what seems to me to be an almost abysmal lack of knowledge about, interest in, or attention to the social and professional forces that have led to the formation, growth and development, and occasional demise of our professional organizations.
I say "seems" because I may be wrong; advancing age, severely impaired vision, and a disinclination to travel prevent me from attending meetings or keeping up very well with the professional literature. But I still talk and correspond with other nurses -- most of them younger than I -- and am amazed at how many otherwise well-informed nurses have never heard of the Structure Study, seem to think that ANA and NLN, like Athena springing fully armed from the brow of Zeus, sprang fully armed from the brow of Isabel Hampton Robb (the "fully armed" from Greek mythology is apt; the two organizations have been taking pot shots at each other ever since), or are unaware of the dynamics that led up to Esther Lucille Brown’s Nursing for the Future.
Reading Joan Lynaugh’s warm and perceptive tribute to Eleanor Lambertsen in the most recent Chronicle gave me a nostalgic attack of "time remembered." I wonder how many readers will remember the Lysaught Report with its "episodic" and "distributive" nursing categories, or the Surgeon General’s Report on Nursing (it had both a date and title but, alas, I can’t remember either and have no source materials), whose first and much quoted sentence, if I remember this correctly, was "Nursing is a deeply troubled profession." Only those of my generation and a few students of nursing history, I fear.
I am 84 and have lived through the same six decades as Eleanor Lambertsen -- not as an activist, however, but as observer from an editorial viewpoint. But I can still remember the faces of Alma Scott and Adelaide Mayo, then chief execs of ANA and NLNE respectively, as they listened to their organizations being dissected at the last joint convention of ANA, NLNE, and NOPHN that concluded the Structure Study in 1952. And, in turning my attention to another landmark event in nursing, I remember equally well the reactions of most of nursing’s leaders as the charismatic Shirley Titus pushed ANA in accepting the concept of collective bargaining and its first economic security program in 1946.
When the late Inez Hinsvark was secretary for the Credentialing Study of the ‘70s*, she wrote a splendid, no-holds-barred history of our professional organizations. I don’t think she intended it to be published -- it was too frank -- but possibly the Center is the custodian of her papers and might find some way to put this one to constructive use.
I’m writing this letter not because I’m holding the Center responsible for nurses’ ignorance about their professional organizations, but because I wish there were some way to nudge them into more interest in the subject. Were I younger, for instance, I would like to research the many and varied commissions that have studied nursing over the years -- the Goldmark Report might be a good starting point. What lead to the establishment of these commissions? What were the outcomes? Did they bring about any significant, long-term changes?
Thank you for listening to what I fear has turned out to be not much more that a long-winded trip down memory lane. I should probably be stuffed, mounted in a glass cage, and labeled " Ancient Nursing Relic." No response is called for; it has been my pleasure to get all this out of my system.
Signed Edith P. Lewis, Southbury, CT
*Editor’s Note: The American Nurses’ Association contracted with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Nursing to conduct a study to examine the feasibility of accreditation of basic and graduate education. Known as the Study of Credentialing in Nursing, the project began in January 1977 and ended in April 1979. Dr. Inez G. Hinsvark was the study director. The study assessed credentialing mechanisms in nursing, including accreditation, certification, and licensure; suggested ways for increasing the effectiveness of credentialing; and recommended future directions for credentialing in nursing. The records of the committee for this study are held by the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee. The Center does not own a copy of the study’s report but would love to acquire one.