Patricia D'Antonio documents nursing from Florence Nightingale's time until today in her newest book, American Nursing: A History of Knowledge, Authority, and the Meaning of Work
While nursing has certainly gone through an upsurge of prestige in recent decades, said Patricia D’Antonio, it has always been true that nurses have had more education, money and status than others in their respective ethnic or social groups.
D’Antonio, an Associate Professor at the School of Nursing and the Associate Director of the Barbara Bates Center for the History of Nursing, said that it has always required an enormous amount of time and money to become a nurse, and that nurses have always sought more education – something that certainly continues today.
“The late 19th century begins the modern age of nursing,” said D’Antonio, who has also done research into psychiatric nursing, her clinical field. “When there started to be standardization, registration of nurses, a defined body of knowledge – things that started primarily with Florence Nightingale in England and spread around the globe – that is when nursing started to be a real profession.”
D’Antonio said that nursing has been influenced by ethnic, racial, socio-economic and even regional variances. In the northern United States, for instance, professional nursing had an easier time becoming accepted. In the South, she said, since there was a longer tradition of African Americans and family taking care of family, many were loath to have women, who comprised the bulk of nurses, take care of strangers.
D’Antonio said she stays away from the doctor-nurse comparison when she looks into nursing in a historical context. “That is a tired analogy,” she said. “Nursing has its own history – one that now also embraces a rise in male nurses and nurses of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. I think in terms of people in their own communities. That is how we can relate history to practice and see where nurses’ power and influence lies.”