The Flu Pandemic of 1918: A Nurse's Story

ABSTRACT

In the spring of 1918, a virus swept across the world, killing approximately 50 million people by the summer of 1919. My grandmother, Kathryn ("Katie") Ann Darmody-an Irish immigrant who settled in New York State in 1904-was among the nurses who responded to this pandemic, which became known as the 1918 influenza pandemic (or, erroneously, the Spanish flu). Today, as the world contends with the COVID-19 pandemic, my grandmother's experiences resonate with new meaning-a reminder of how, then as now, nurses have been at the forefront of public health. Her story, transmitted across generations, is one I now share with a new generation of nurses.

[Psychiatric nurses experiences of the humanization movement during the first and second waves of deinstitutionalization in Quebec (1960-1990)]

Introduction : This study examines the humanization movement at the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu psychiatric hospital between the 1960s and the 1990s.Context : Conducting a historiography of psychiatric deinstitutionalization in Quebec during the twentieth century shows that the institution was a place of social control and, above all else, a place where psychiatric patients were neglected and dehumanized.Objective : While the historiography since the 1960s has focused on a largely one-dimensional and critical reading of the way in which deinstitutionalization took place in Quebec, I have instead chosen to focus on the changes that took place within the Quebec hospital's walls.Method : In addition to the medical records of the patients who were interned in 1961, I conducted interviews to examine the experiences and emotions of nurses who worked in the psychiatric hospital between the 1960s and 1990s.Results : The examination of medical records revealed patients' reluctance and resistance to reintegrate into society. The interviews with nurses revealed that they often felt close to their patients.Discussion : The words and memories of nurses enrich and deepen the complexity of the history of psychiatric nursing practices, extend the existing historiography, and open new avenues for research in the field.Conclusion : The deinstitutionalization movement promoted mental health policies that transformed the old psychiatric hospital. This new analytical approach contributed to renewing the history of psychiatric nursing practices.

The history of critical care in Kenya

Critical care is a young specialty in Kenya. From its humble beginnings in the 1960s to present day Kenya, the bulk of this service has largely been provided by anaesthetists. We provide a detailed account of the growth and development of this specialty in our country, the attempts made by our people to grow this service within our borders and the vital role our international partners have played throughout this process. We also share a selection of our successes over the years, the challenges we have faced and our aspirations as we look to the future.

Psychiatry's 'Others'? Rethinking the Professional Self-Fashioning of British Mental Nurses c. 1900-20

Despite facing manifold social and educational barriers, British asylum nurses across the long nineteenth century articulated distinctive professional identities as a means of leveraging their position in the medical hierarchy. This article draws upon a corpus of previously unattributed contributions to the Asylum News (1897-1919) - one of the first journals produced for the edification of asylum workers - to illustrate the diversity of medical personae developed and disseminated by these employees in the Edwardian era. Through scientific and creative works, nurses engaged with the pressing social and medical debates of the day, in the process exposing a heterogeneous intellectual culture. Moreover, as their writings attest, for some ambitious nurses these pretensions to intellectual authority prompted claims for medical autonomy, driving agitation on the hospital wards. The article thus strengthens claims for the 'cultural agency' of asylum workers and offers new insights into the cultural antecedents of professionalisation and trade unionism.

Clocking up skills and experience

June Andrews was made an OBE earlier this year for services to people with dementia. Her 30-year nursing career has spanned clinical practice, policy making and strategic management, including 10 years as director of the Dementia Services Development Centre at Scotland's University of Stirling. She now works independently to improve the lives of people with dementia and their carers.

Duty and 'Euthanasia': the Nurses of Meseritz-Obrawalde

This article examines the actions and testimonies of 14 nurses who killed psychiatric patients at the state hospital of Meseritz-Obrawalde in the Nazi 'euthanasia' program. The nurses provided various reasons for their decisions to participate in the killings. An ethical analysis of the testimonies demonstrates that a belief in the relief of suffering, the notion that the patients would 'benefit' from death, their selection by physicians for the 'treatment' of 'euthanasia', and a perceived duty to obey unquestioningly the orders of physicians were the primary ethical reasons that were stated for their behavior. However, 20 years had elapsed between the killings and the trial, thus giving ample opportunity for the defendants to develop comfortable rationales for their actions and for their attorneys to have observed successful defenses of others accused of euthanasia.

[Parisian hospital nurses during the First World War]

The stereotypical image of the nurse caring for First World War soldiers is of a Red Cross volunteer tending to a wounded soldier in a field hospital. In reality, the role played by nurses in hospitals far behind the frontline was just as crucial. This massive contribution of volunteer nurses influenced the process of the professionalisation of nurses in France.

Nurse of the Year: Helen Dinham

Helen implemented a service improvement project to bring surgical site infection incidence down to zero for patients who are operated on in Royal Gwent Hospital orthopaedic theatre. She also led a process mapping exercise to bring Credits 4 Cleaning compliance up to 100%, and achieved 100% patient and staff satisfaction with environment cleanliness and infection control standards. As a result of her work, improved practice has been rolled out across all theatres in Aneurin Bevan Health Board and 100% Credits 4 Cleaning compliance has been achieved in all 17 theatres of Royal Gwent Hospital

A context analysis of student training records dating from the 1950/1960s: what were desirable and undesirable student nurse characteristics?

AIM

The aim of this study is to identify what were desirable and undesirable student nurse characteristics in the 1950/1960s and relate them to those who had successfully completed the programme and gained State Registration and those who had not. A further aim was to undertake comparisons with modern day values of what are viewed as desirable traits in nurses.

BACKGROUND

In the 1950/1960s student nurses were hospital employees. Nurse training was based in hospital training schools and coordinated by sister tutors. Learning about nursing largely took place in clinical settings where there was limited supervision of student nurses by qualified nurses.

DESIGN

Content analysis approaches were used whereby positive and negative comments related to successful and unsuccessful completers were identified.

METHODS

Data were extracted from individual training records relating to 641 student nurses. The records dated from 1955 to 1968. Clinical and training school reports were summarized by senior hospital figures such as the hospital matron. These reports were the focus of the analysis.

FINDINGS

Desirable student nurse traits identified in the analysis were being a 'nice person', who is kind, compassionate and attentive to patients, conscientious, bright and intelligent. Other values such as being hard-working, reliable and punctual reflect that the students studied were primarily employees. Amenable to discipline and unquestioningly obeying a doctor's order also were part of the conventions of the time. Most negative comments related to the unsuccessful completers.

CONCLUSIONS

New insights into what was viewed as desirable and undesirable nursing characteristics in the 1950/1960s are identified. These insights have national and international relevance.

[The beginnings of the nursing profession : the complementary relationship between secular caregivers and hospital nuns in France in the 17th and 18th centuries]

The words used for designating the caregivers are ambiguous. Little by little, the word "nurse" becomes widely used, mainly in the feminine form due to the need of specialized staff. Health care structures are developing in the 17th and 18 centuries, the remains of which you can find in today hospitals (Salpêtrière hospital, Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris). The government of Louis XIV cares for the poor sick people, the vagabonds and the beggars. It opens new general hospitals as it will be the case later in all Europe. In the 17th century, the staff of the general hospital in Paris is entirely secular. The Paris general hospital is headed by the magistrates of Paris Parliament. The healthcare institutions employ both secular and religious staff for example the Hotel Dieu in Paris and the one in Marseilles. In the 17th century, there are 2000 secular caregivers in France. The order of the "Filles de la Charité" (grey sisters) is not submitted to the rule of enclosure. They renew their vows every year. For their founders Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marcillac, their monastery should be the cells of the sick, their cloister should be the rooms of the hospitals or the streets of the town. The secular or religious caregivers are excellent in the apothecary and they open a network of small dispensaries. It improves the health of the French population and allows fighting against the epidemics. This activity allowed some women to have a rewarding activity and a social status of which they were apparently satisfied.

[Paris 1633--a milestone in the development of modern nursing. Vincent de Paul and the sisterhood of the Daughters of charity]

The development of nursing is analysed from the perspective of its situation in Germany today, and the requirements expected for the next years to come. It becomes apparent that nursing as a profession regulated by the state is a young profession, just some one hundred years old. During the 19th century nursing in Germany was mostly performed by sisterhoods bound to the church and organised as collectives. But it was stimulated and challenged by the development from a philosophically oriented library medicine to a scientifically oriented hospital medicine. Thus its transformation into a profession regulated by the state ended for the time being in 1906. Nursing sisterhoods in Germany were modelled for the French Daughters of Charity that had been planted in 1633 by Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac in Paris. Models for this planting are pointed to.

Do ward sisters have influence over care?

The role of the ward sister has changed significantly since modern nursing began in the 19th century. This article looks at the history of the ward sister, explores the impact of political and professional changes on the role and discusses how ward sisters can help maintain the quality of care in today's NHS.

Looking back 50 years in hospital administration

Healthcare policy and hospital administration are dynamic and growing fields, oriented toward shaping the future. In an effort to understand where these fields have come from, as well as some of the re-occuring challenges faced, we conducted a retrospective analysis. Our research identified progress and major accomplishments, as well as issues that continue to challenge the field in five key areas: (1) the evolution of nursing, (2) funding and legislation, (3) hospital design, construction and technology, (4) patient care and infection control and (5) leadership. To explore these areas, a thematic content review was conducted on the 12 inaugural issues of Hospital Administration in Canada, a hospital administration periodical from 1962. All written content was reviewed, coded and categorized into major themes that represented the major hospital administration topics of 50 years ago. In this article, five prominent themes are explored and further illustrated using key stories and milestones from 1962.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

In "Looking Back 50 Years in Hospital Administration," Graham and Sibbald identify five principal themes in the 1962 issues of Hospital Administration in Canada: the evolution of nursing, funding and legislation, hospital design, patient care and infection control and leadership. These themes are of course consistent with thematic concerns regarding healthcare in 2012; in some ways, this consistency over 50 years is disappointing, but not surprising. This commentary examines some of the specific themes.

[The voluntary medical care during the First World War. The work of the nursing staff in the military field hospitals on the eastern and western frontlines]

The voluntary medical care consisted of civilians who were provided to the medical corps in the First World War for the first time in this great dimension. The nursing staff on the eastern and the western German frontlines were sending letters back home, some of them were drafting diaries due to the special event or recorded their experiences after the war. Besides the narratives of their private impressions, these documents are reflecting their nursing work, which the nursing staff had to achieve. An important factor was, that the patients were soldiers. Conflicts in the cooperation with the medical staff and among the nurses did not seem to have influenced a good quality of care, however it facilitated a harmonic coexistence and above all, it helped to sustain behind the fronts. The study of the nursing care and the relationship with patients and among the staff reflects on the meaning of nursing care for the staff.

"To help a million sick, you must kill a few nurses": nurses' occupational health, 1890-1914

Although nursing is recognized today as a serious occupational health risk, nursing historians have neglected the theme of occupational health and individual nurses' experience of illness. This article uses the local history of three case study institutions to set nurses' health in a national context of political, social, and cultural issues, and suggests a relationship between nurses' health and the professionalization of nursing. The institutions approached the problem differently for good reasons, but the failure to adopt a coherent and consistent policy worked to the detriment of nurses' health. However, the conclusion that occupational health was somehow neglected by contemporary actors was, nevertheless, erroneous and facilitated omission of the subject from historical studies concentrating on professional projects and the wider politics of nursing. This article shows that occupational health issues were inexorably connected to these nursing debates and cannot be understood without reference to professional projects.

[Rationalization of Protestant nursing. A comparison of Deaconess Motherhouses in West Germany and the United States, 1945-1970]

Protestant Deaconess Motherhouses emerged as a German nursing organization in the nineteenth century to be later exported to many other countries including the United States. The motherhouse principle could not be simply transferred without being adapted to the situation prevailing in each of those countries. The essay investigates the conception and transformation of Protestant nursing by comparing a West German and American deaconess motherhouse each in their particular context. It shows that the deaconesses in the United States developed their own, more scientifically oriented understanding of nursing and were therefore more open to the rationalization of nursing than their West German counterpart.

The importance of fastidiousness in nursing

There has been a lot of criticism of nurses recently. Some would say that one of the biggest problems today is that nurses are not as disciplined or don't pay sufficient attention to detail. One hundred years ago in the BJN, there was an article questioning just how fussy and careful nurses were about small details such as dress and cleanliness.