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. Now in its fifteenth year of existence, the Center continues to create and maintain a resource for such research; to improve the quality and scope of historical scholarship on nursing; and to disseminate new knowledge on nursing history through education, conferences, publications, and inter-disciplinary collaboration.
Current projects at the Center range from studies of international nursing and home-based nursing to research on care of the critically ill. We also continue to collect, process, and catalogue an outstanding collection of primary historical materials.
The Barbara Bates Center for The Study of The History of Nursing is open to visitors Monday-Friday, 9:00-5:00 p.m. Scholars planning to conduct research at the Center should contact the secretary at (215) 898-4502, or ehweiss@nursing.upenn.edu. Email is the best way to contact our curator (gfarr@nursing.upenn.edu) who can respond to inquiries with a description of the scope and content of relevant materials in the various collections.
Director: Julie Fairman
Associate Directors: Patricia D’Antonio, Barbra Mann Wall
Center Associate: Jean C. Whelan
Directors Emeritae: Joan E. Lynaugh, Karen Buhler-Wilkerson
Curator: Gail E. Farr
Secretary: Betsy Weiss
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