Abstracts for seminars April-May
April 2
Julie Sochalski, PhD, RN, FAAN
“Policy, Politics and the International History of Nurse Staffing Ratios”
This presentation offers an historical analysis of the political and policy process that led to the adoption of nurse staffing ratios in hospitals, the concurrent role these processes played in motivating a research agenda on the effects of nurse staffing levels on patient outcomes, and the relationship between the resulting evidence and the resulting policy initiatives.
April 16
Matthew McHugh, PhD, CRNP, MPH, JD
“A Framework for Public Health Policy Evaluation Research”
This presentation will outline a framework for the evaluation of public health policy. The framework orients research objectives within the normative, political, and historical considerations necessary to justify and develop policy that improves public health without unacceptable tradeoffs.
April 30
Beth Linker, PhD,
“(Wo)manly Workers: Gender and Rehabilitation in World War I”
World War I Rehabilitators contended that the conventional Victorian notion of womanhood—defined as a nurturing mother-type figure—would be dangerous to the rehabilitation movement, for such a woman might pamper the disabled man, diminishing his will to work. The ideal woman, according to one rehabilitator, would instead exert a “firm but kindly discipline” over disabled men to get them to the point of self-sufficiency. This paper will explore both how female medical aids (physical therapists, occupational therapists, and nurses) and rehabilitating soldiers reacted to this demand.
May 7
Arthur Caplan, PhD
“Duty and “Euthanasia”: The Nurses of Meseritz-Obrawald”
Why were nurses able to involve themselves in the systematic murder of psychiatric patients in Nazi Germany? How did they reconcile their views of their professional ethics with active involvement in euthanasia?
In 1939, Hitler authorized a program of ‘euthanasia’ of children and adults with physical and psychiatric disorders. Initially, gas chambers were established at six psychiatric institutions in Germany and Austria. This program was officially discontinued due to community protests in August, 1941. But the killings continued on an individual basis. Physicians selected patients who were unable to work or who required extensive care, and ordered the nurses to administer lethal doses of sedatives to them. Meseritz-Obrawalde was a site for 10,000 of these killings This talk will review some of the ethical thinking and rationales of nurses involved in this period of so-called ‘wild euthanasia’ killlings at Meseritz-Obrawald which was located then in the province of Pomerania in Germany (now Miedzyrzecz in Poland).
May 21
Deborah Sampson, PhD, RN
“Prescribing Privileges for Nurse Practitioner Practices: An Historical Study of Four States’ Legislative Practice Acts Negotiations Over Time- 1975-2006”
In this presentation, Dr. Sampson explores her ongoing historical research on nurse practitioner prescribing legislation in New Hampshire, Texas, Michigan, and Georgia, contrasting the process of stakeholder negotiations in these states to uncover nuanced problems in translating a national health policy care agenda at the state level.