Penn Nursing > Nursing Research > Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing
 

Welcome
to the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing

The Barbara Bates Center for The Study of the History of Nursing is the preeminent center for scholarship in nursing history. The mission of the Bates Center is to ensure the generation of historical knowledge, scholarship, and research on healthcare and nursing history in the U.S. and across the globe. We believe this knowledge will lead to better understanding of contemporary healthcare issues.

Our priority at this time is to enlarge our discipline’s understanding of the importance of a historical standpoint to the development of effective health policy and patient care strategies through the writing of scholarly papers, brochures, and books that tie nursing’s history directly to current health topics. Our work in the history of nursing provides evidence necessary for a better understanding of the nation’s health care problems and the strategies required for resolving critical issues.

Center faculty include internationally recognized and award winning nurse historians who carry out large scale federal and foundation funded research projects, teach School of Nursing history courses, as well as courses throughout the school’s curriculum, and  serve as resources on  historical knowledge and  methods used in carrying out historical research projects. Our work is supported by the Center’s endowment, as is an extensive archival collection of photographs, artifacts, and the personal and professional papers of nursing leaders, schools of nursing, visiting nurse associations, and voluntary associations. We and many other scholars from across the world use the Center’s collections to bring the knowledge provided by history methodology to bear on important contemporary healthcare solutions.

 

 

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"Historical research provides the foundation to address the important strategic issues of our times. Enduring problems such as the nurse shortage, the shape of nursing education, and the care of indigent and chronically ill populations are rooted in the history of health care and the history of nursing in particular. A highly creative meshing of history and policy may provide the innovative strategies necessary to overcome problems present in American health care since the turn of the century.'

Julie Fairman, PhD, FAAN, RN, Director
Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing