A History of Nursing Ideas (review)

Reviewed by: A History of Nursing Ideas Patricia D'Antonio Linda C. Andrist, Patrice K. Nicholas, and Karen A. Wolf , eds. A History of Nursing Ideas. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett, 2006. xxiii + 504 pp. $64.95 (paperbound, 0-7637-2289-8). This collection of forty original and classic articles began as course readings for entering graduate students in nursing at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Institute of Health Professions. These MGH students represent one of the fastest growing cohorts of new recruits into the profession: men and women with baccalaureate degrees but no formal nursing background who, after three demanding (but hopefully satisfying) years, emerge with the experience and expertise to qualify as advanced-practice registered nurses. They must master complicated content, skills, and, as importantly, ideas about what nursing means. This fascinating collection of essays by nurses for nurses emphasizes the contextual nature of the nursing ideas that these and most other students learn. It should be, and no doubt will be, widely adopted as a text in schools of nursing. But the collection will also be of interest to those outside the profession: the nature and the lineage of the ideas presented offer a tantalizing glimpse into how one profession self-consciously thinks about and orients itself toward the past, the present, and the future. [End Page 671] The first section of the volume pulls together essays that examine what the editors identify as the "critical threads" that should be addressed in nursing education, practice, and research. This section casts a wide net: articles explore the relationship between nursing and feminism, the construction of nursing as an oppressed group, gendered relationships, the meaning of cultural competence, race and race relations, the concept of community, and the dialectic between technology and caring. This is a section about paradoxes and problems, some of which are unique to nursing: How does one think about a profession that seems to remain persistently invisible and relatively powerless? How does one create a place for men within a historically female group? Other problems are shared by all health professionals: How does one move beyond our system's dominant white, Euro-American cultural orientation? And how does machine and virtual technology reshape a clinician's encounter with a patient? None have simple solutions—but the past represents comfort; Florence Nightingale and Lillian Wald, for example, persevered and ultimately triumphed over adversity, and their successors can do no less. The second section turns to the specific construction of nursing ideas. Here the editors reprint some of the profession's most influential articles, including Barbara Carper's "Fundamental Patterns of Knowing," Peggy L. Chinn's "Toward a Theory of Nursing Art," and Rozella M. Schlotfeldt's "Structuring Nursing Knowledge." They also present original articles that explore the development of nursing knowledge in such areas as spirituality, stress and coping, bereavement, and end-of-life care. But however broad the scope of this section, the underlying premise remains clear, persistent, and positivistic: nursing's future lies in the creation of a discipline-specific body of knowledge, supported by systematic inquiry, and ultimately valued as a unique contribution to the health and welfare of individuals, families, and communities. Here, a past tied to homes and hospitals becomes more problematic: it seemingly bequeaths a legacy of invisibility, and it, in turn, becomes invisible. Nursing's future, as detailed in the collection's final section, promises to be the culmination of what Karen A. Wolf describes as the "slow march to professional practice" (p. 301). The articles in this section explore the twists and turns of this march as they are experienced in the still-contentious debates about preparation for entry-level practice, the development of research journals, the meaning of codes of ethics, and the emergence of systems of higher education and advanced practice. One clearly sees the ideological draw of the idea of professionalism—and its association with nursing's quest for increased status, power, autonomy, and control. But one still wonders about its persistence in the face of sustained critiques by historians both inside and outside the discipline. A History of Nursing Ideas supplies one answer: Now, the past provides legitimation. It carries on an internalist...

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