Nursing, obedience, and complicity with eugenics: a contextual interpretation of nursing morality at the turn of the twentieth century

Nursing and eugenics in the early 20th century United States

BACKGROUND

Research has documented how ideas about race, class, ethnicity, ableism, and structural hierarchies determine health outcomes and disparities today. The historical role of nursing practice and education needs further exploration.

PURPOSE

This study aims to better understand how some nurses thought about and interacted with eugenics in the early 20th century.

METHODS

Historical analysis of primary and secondary sources.

DISCUSSION

In the early 20th century, reformers of the day, including some nurses, demonstrated much ambiguity of thinking as they pushed for eugenic improvement of the "human race" while also enhancing environmental changes, such as good nutrition and clean, safe housing.

CONCLUSION

Nursing's past relationship with eugenics sheds light on the history and construction of the system leading to health disparities among marginalized groups. Nurses must acknowledge the historical roots and context of their education and practice as we engage in critical conversations about social inequities.

Feminist Abolitionist Nursing

The converging crises of COVID-19 and racist state violence in 2020 shifted public discourse about marginalization, public health, and racism in unprecedented ways. Nursing responded to the pandemic with heroic commitment and new politicization. But public engagement with systemic racism is forcing a reckoning in nursing. The profession has its own history of racism and of alliance with systems of state control with which to contend. In this article, we argue nursing must adopt an ethics of abolitionism to realize its goals for health and justice. Abolitionism theorizes that policing and prison systems, originating from systems of enslavement and colonial rule, continue to function as originally intended, causing racial oppression and violence. The harms of these systems will not be resolved through their reform but through creation of entirely new approaches to community support. Nursing as a collective can contribute to abolitionist projects through advocacy, practice, and research.

Nurses' reflections on good nurse traits: Implications for improving care quality

BACKGROUND

Good nurses show concern for patients by caring for them effectively and attentively to foster their well-being. However, nurses cannot be taught didactically to be "good" or any trait that characterizes a good nurse. Nurses' self-awareness of their role traits warrants further study.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed (a) to develop a strategy to elicit nurses' self-exploration of the importance of good nurse traits and (b) to explore any discrepancies between such role traits perceived by nurses as ideally and actually important.

RESEARCH DESIGN

For this mixed-method study, we used good nurse trait card play to trigger nurses' reflections based on clinical practice. Nurse participants appraised the ideal and actual importance of each trait using a Q-sort grid. The gap between the perceived ideal and actual importance of each trait was examined quantitatively, while trait-related clinical experiences were analyzed qualitatively.

PARTICIPANTS AND RESEARCH CONTEXT

Participants were 35 in-service nurses (mean age = 31.6 years (range = 23-49 years); 10.1 years of nursing experience (range = 1.5-20 years)) recruited from a teaching hospital in Taiwan.

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the study site.

FINDINGS

Good nurse trait card play with a Q-sort grid served as an icebreaker to help nurse participants talk about their experiences as embodied in good quality nursing care. Nurses' perceived role-trait discrepancies were divided into three categories: over-performed, least discrepant, and under-performed. The top over-performed trait was "obedience."

DISCUSSION

Patients' most valued traits ("patient," "responsible," "cautious," and "considerate") were perceived by participants as ideally important but were under-performed, perhaps due to experienced nurses' loss of idealism.

CONCLUSION

Good nurse trait card play with Q-sort grid elicited nurses' self-dialogue and revealed evidence of the incongruity between nurses' perceived ideal and actual importance of traits. The top over-performed trait, "obedience," deserves more study.