Derek Nurse looks at variations in the form and function of tense and aspect in Bantu, a branch of Niger-Congo, the world's largest language phylum. Bantu languages are spoken in central, eastern, and southern sub-Saharan Africa south of a line between Nigeria and Somalia. By current estimates there are between 250 and 600 of them, as yet neither adequately classified nor fully described. Professor Nurse's account is based on data from more than 200 Bantu languages and varieties, a representative sample (...) of which is freely available on the publisher's website. He devotes substantial chapters to the analysis and comparison of the different tense and aspect systems found in Bantu. He also examines the verbal categories with which they interact, including negation and focus. Synchronic and diachronic perspectives are interwoven throughout the book. Following a brief history of Bantu over the last five thousand years, the final two chapters look systematically at the history of tense and aspect in Bantu. The first deals with the reconstruction of the earlier forms from which contemporary structures, morphemes, and categories are derived, and the second with the processes of change, including grammaticalization, by means of which older analytical structures and independent lexical items moved as they became incorporated as grammatical inflections and categories. (shrink)

The history of nursing in the home: revealing the significance of place in the expression of moral agency The relationship between place and moral agency in home care nursing is explored in this paper. The notion of place is argued to have relevance to moral agency beyond moral context. This argument is theoretically located in feminist ethics and human geography and is supported through an examination of historical documents (1900–33) that describe the experiences and insights of American (...) home care/private duty nurses or that are related to nursing ethics. Specifically, the role of place in inhibiting and enhancing care, justice, good relationships, and power in the practice of private duty nurses is explored. Several implications for current nursing ethics come out of this analysis. (i) The moral agency of nurses is highly nuanced. It is not only structured by nurses’ relationships to patients and health professionals, i.e. moral context, it is also structured by the place of nursing care. (ii) Place has the potential to limit and enhance the power of nurses. (iii) Some aspects of nursing's conception of the good, such as what constitutes a good nurse–patient relationship, are historically and geographically relative. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the development of nursing ethics in Slovakia before the year 1989. It points to the fact that it was impossible to speak about nursing ethics as an autonomous field in this period of time. Reflections on nursing ethics were presented within medical ethics, or particularly based on the importance of reflections about the need of philosophy within medicine.

Modern American nursing has an extensive ethical heritage literature that extends from the 1870s to 1965 when the American Nurses Association issued a policy paper that called for moving nursing education out of hospital diploma programs and into colleges and universities. One consequence of this move was the dispersion of nursing libraries and the loss of nursing ethics textbooks, as they were largely not brought over into the college libraries. In addition to approximately 100 nursing (...) ethics textbooks, the nursing ethics heritage literature also includes hundreds of journal articles that are often made less accessible in modern databases that concentrate on the past 20 or 30 years. A second consequence of nursing’s movement into colleges and universities is that ethics was no longer taught by nursing faculty, but becomes separated and placed as a discrete ethics course in departments of philosophy or theology. These courses were medically identified and rarely incorporated authentic nursing content. This shift in nursing education occurs contemporaneously with the rise of the field of bioethics. Bioethics is rapidly embraced by nursing, and as it develops within nursing, it fails to incorporate the rich ethical heritage, history, and literature of nursing prior to the development of the field of bioethics. This creates a radical disjunction in nursing’s ethics; a failure to more adequately explore the moral identity of nursing; the development of an ethics with a lack of fit with nursing’s ethical history, literature, and theory; a neglect of nursing’s ideal of service; a diminution of the scope and richness of nursing ethics as social ethics; and a loss of nursing ethical heritage of social justice activism and education. We must reclaim nursing’s rich and capacious ethics heritage literature; the history of nursing ethics matters profoundly. (shrink)

There is a common tradition in European education going back to the Middle Ages which long played a part in providing the curriculum of schools which catered both for the wealthy and for able sons of less well-to-do families. Originally published in 1974, this volume examines the relationship between education and society in the different countries of Europe from which differences in tradition and practice emerge. The countries discussed include: France, Germany, the former Soviet Union, Poland and Sweden.

Originally published in 1972, this book is concerned with education as part of a larger social history. Chapters include: The roots of Anglican supremacy in English education The Board schools of London The use of ecclesiastical records for the history of education Topographical resources: private and secondary education from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

Originally published in 1971, this volume examines the relationship between the history and sociology of education. History does not stand in isolation, but has much to draw from and contribute to, other disciplines. The methods and concepts of sociology, in particular, are exerting increasing influence on historical studies, especially the history of education. Since education is considered to be part of the social system, historians and sociologists have come to survey similar fields; yet each discipline appears to (...) have its own aims and methodology. (shrink)

Part of the educational system in England has been geared towards the preparation of particular professions, while the identity and status of members of some professions have depended significantly on the general education they have received. Originally published in 1973, this volume explores the interaction between education and the professions. It also looks at the education of the main professions in sixteenth century England and at how twentieth century university teaching is a key profession for the training of new recruits (...) to other professions. (shrink)

In this paper, I write about nurses of colour who have made significant contributions to nursing, yet are actively ignored in traditional nursing textbooks related to colonized thinking. One consequence of this is that when we think about comparing the disparities of the past to the present day, we see that we have not made much of a difference. The disparity is still huge. I call on all of us as nurses to challenge ourselves to think beyond the (...) box of colonized thought to what we know is true. (shrink)

Mainstream nursing history often positions itself in opposition to philosophy and many nursing historians are reticent of theorizing. In the quest to illuminate the lives of nurses and women current historical approaches are driven by reformist aspirations but are based on the conception that nursing or caring is basically good and the timelessness of universal values. This has the effect of essentialising political categories of identity such as class, race and gender. This kind of history (...) is about affirmation rather than friction and about the conservation of memory and musealization. In contrast, we will focus on how we imagine nursing history could be used as a philosophical, critical perspective to challenge the ongoing transformations of our societies. Existing reality must be confronted with strangeness and the historically different can assume the function of this counterpart, meaning present and past must continuously be set in relation to each other. Thus, critical history is always the history of the present but not merely the pre‐history of the present – critique must rather present different realities and different certainties. In this paper, we use this approach to discuss the implementation of the nursing process (NP) in Germany. The nursing process appears to be a technology that helped to set up an infrastructure ‐ or assemblage ‐ to transform nursing interventions into a commodity exchangable between consumers and nurses in a free market. In our theoretical perspective, we argue that NP was a step in the realization of the German ordoliberal program, a specific variety of neoliberalism. In order to implement market‐orientation in the healthcare system it was necessary to transform hospitals into calculable spaces and to make all performances in the hospital calculable. This radically transformed not just the systems, but the ways in which nurses and patients conveived of themselves. (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

In this article, the nursing health history is revisited with a hermeneutic lens to uncover means by which this tool can better serve nursing practice. It is argued that further distanciation from the developmental and medical model is necessary to accurately uncover health and history in the nurse–client encounter. Based on the works of prominent hermeneutic philosophers, such as Heidegger, Gadamer, Merleau‐Ponty, Ricoeur, and Taylor, four orientations to health history and nursing are explored: orientation (...) to caring, orientation to narrative, orientation to time, and orientation to the body. The nursing health history is used as a vehicle for illuminating the usefulness of a hermeneutic perspective in everyday nursing practice. This article reveals views of health, history, and health history that are already known to nurses and the nursing milieu but are concealed by more dominant outlooks. The hermeneutical perspective presented in this article can help to reveal the important dimensions of everyday nursing practice and foster a richer attunement with the complex health experiences of individuals. (shrink)

This paper historicizes the taken‐for‐granted acceptance of reflection as a fundamental professional practice in nursing. It draws attention to the broad application of reflective practice, from pedagogy to practice to regulation, and explores the epistemological basis upon which the authority of reflective discourse rests. Previous work has provided a series of critiques of the logic and suitability of reflective practice across all domains of nursing. The goal of this paper is to commence a history of nursing's (...) reflective identity. The paper begins with a discussion of Dewey and Schön then focuses on Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action as the epistemological basis of reflective practice's standing as a authoritative discourse in nursing. (shrink)

This paper is part of Forum COVID-19: Perspectives in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In the current COVID 19 pandemic, the importance of professional nursing is widely recognized. In German-speaking and international research, the history of nursing during pandemics and epidemics is largely unwritten. This paper gives an overview of questions and results in this research area and discusses the potential of a pandemic nursing history.

Fanny Bré was a volunteer nurse in the International Brigades, who fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) on the side of the democratically elected Republican government. The objective of this study is to understand the relationship between Bré's antifascist ideas, her conception of care and the activities she carried out in the Spanish hospitals of Casa Roja (Murcia), Villa Paz (Selices, Cuenca) and Vic (Barcelona). We use narrative biography to describe Bré's personal, political and professional trajectory. To do so, (...) we conducted a content analysis of primary sources archived in Spain, Russia and France and secondary sources that emerged from a thorough literature review. We identified three thematic axes: (1) a concept of nursing in the service of the antifascist struggle, (2) nursing activity for high‐quality care and (3) political action for improving hospital organisation and care. The interest of Bré's texts transcends the war in Spain because, in them, Bré questions the neutrality of care by revealing that care can itself be a political act. (shrink)

Background The field of nursing has long been concerned with ethical issues. The history of the nursing profession has a rich legacy of attention to social justice and to societal questions regarding issues of fairness, access, equity, and equality. Some nurses have found that their clinical experiences spur an interest in ethical patient care, and many are now nurse bioethicists, having pursued additional training in bioethics and related fields (e.g., psychology, sociology). Purpose The authors describe how the (...) clinical and research experiences of nurses give them a unique voice in the field of bioethics. Results Authors present reasons for the relative invisibility of nurse bioethicists, compared with physician, theologian, or philosopher bioethicists, as well as current efforts to increase the visibility of nurse bioethicists. They also describe four specific areas where nurse bioethicists have made and continue to make important contributions: as ethics consultants to colleagues in hospitals and other settings; as bioethics researchers or as advisers to researchers conducting trials with human subjects; as educators of trainees, patients and families, healthcare providers, and the public; and in helping to draft humane and ethical policies for the care of vulnerable patients and underserved populations. Conclusion Nurse bioethicists are central to the future goals of healthcare bringing a unique perspective to the day-to-day ethical challenges of both clinical care and research, as well as to the education of health professionals and the public. (shrink)

This article summarizes a virtual live‐streamed panel event that occurred in August 2020 and was cosponsored by the International Philosophy of Nursing Society (IPONS) and the University of California, Irvine's Center for Nursing Philosophy. The event consisted of a series of three self‐contained panel discussions focusing on the past, present and future of IPONS and was moderated by the current Chair of IPONS, Catherine Green. The first panel discussion explored the history of IPONS and the journal (...) class='Hi'>Nursing Philosophy. The second panel involved a reflection on the challenges of doing nursing philosophy in a research‐intensive context of a Canadian university and the history and current movements in nursing philosophy in the Nordic countries. The final panel involved presentations on the future potential for philosophy in/and for nursing, the critical connections between nursing philosophy and nursing theory, dismantling racism in nursing and the potential for process philosophy to help explore nursing's unique efficacy in creating possibilities for health. The panels were followed by a lively Q&A session with participants, of which there were 252 registrants from across the globe. The event underscored the wide and diverse interests of nurses in philosophical discussion and the need for more virtual events and other connective modalities bringing nurses together to discuss and analyze the value and potential of philosophy to better understand and advance nursing theory and practice. (shrink)

The professions of nursing and nurse education are currently experiencing a crisis of confidence, particularly in the UK, where the Francis Report and other recent reviews have highlighted a number of cases of nurses who no longer appear willing or able to ‘care’. The popular press, along with some elements of the nursing profession, has placed the blame for these failures firmly on the academy and particularly on the relatively recent move to all‐graduate status in England for pre‐registration (...) student nurses. This has come to be known in the UK as the ‘too‐posh‐to‐wash’ argument, that there is an incommensurability between being educated to degree level and performing basic nursing tasks. I will argue in this paper that the diagnosis of the problem is substantively correct, but the formulation and the prescription are misguided and dangerous. I will suggest that the growing emphasis on research‐based and evidence‐based practice is the logical conclusion of an inappropriate scientific paradigm for nursing which is underpinned by the social sciences, by technical rationality, and by a focus on people. In contrast, I will suggest that a more fruitful way of thinking about and practising nursing and nurse education is to consider it as a human science with a focus on persons in which evidence for practice derives largely from practice itself. The history of the idea of a human science is traced from its roots in nineteenth century hermeneutics to the work of Gadamer and R.D. Laing in the 1960s, and I attempt to imagine a paradigm for nursing practice, scholarship, and education based on Laing's ‘existential–phenomenological’ approach with a focus on the endeavour to understand and relate to individual persons rather than to make broad prescriptions for practice based on statistical and other generalizations. (shrink)

Polish society has found itself at a very important point in its history. The transformation from a traditional to a postmodern pluralistic society involves changes in many spheres of social life. These trends give rise to the question of which way the younger generation of Polish nurses will be going. The main objective of this research was to elucidate the opinions of nurses on life and health as basic values, and on their ethical and religious background regarding their (...) class='Hi'>nursing care. The study made use of a questionnaire for collection and interpretation of the data. Although this article shows some lack of consistency, and even contradictions, it is possible to conclude that life and health are cherished with affection by the great majority of nurses as positive factors of human existence. (shrink)

This study aimed to examine the meanings that nurses attached to the ‘treatments’ administered to cure ‘sexual deviation’ (SD) in theUK, 1935–1974. In theUK, homosexuality was considered a classifiable mental illness that could be ‘cured’ until 1992. Nurses were involved in administering painful and distressing treatments. The study is based on oral history interviews with fifteen nurses who had administered treatments to cure individuals of theirSD. The interviews were transcribed for historical interpretation. Some nurses believed that their role was (...) to passively follow any orders they had been given. Other nurses limited their culpability concerning administering these treatments by adopting dehumanising and objectifying language and by focussing on administrative tasks, rather than the human beings in need of their care. Meanwhile, some nurses genuinely believed that they were acting beneficently by administering these distinctly unpleasant treatments. It is envisaged that this study might act to reiterate the need for nurses to ensure their interventions have a sound evidence base and that they constantly reflect on the moral and value base of their practice and the influence that science and societal norms can have on changing views of what is considered ‘acceptable practice’. (shrink)

This paper attempts to uncover some of the factors that may have influenced the choice of model for the systematic training of nurses in Denmark. From a historical analysis of selected historical literature, nursing magazines, and archival documents, three themes emerge: the interest from (and of) the medical profession, the strategy on nurse training of the Danish Nurses’ Organization, and the societal context of the time. Despite there being a Deaconess Institution in Copenhagen from 1863, it was ultimately the (...) Nightingale model that formed the basis for the training programme. Findings suggest that the Nightingale influence within the medical establishment and among leaders in Danish nursing played a vital role in this choice. As well, the Danish Nurses’ Organization actively promoted their preferred 3‐year training model, which had strong similarities to the Nightingale model. Changes in family and social life after the 1864 defeat in the Prussian war fostered a growing demand for the liberalization of women's rights and a need for increased professionalization in the nursing and caring function. (shrink)

The professionalization of modern nursing education from 1850 and forward is closely linked to values and virtues underpinned by Christian ideals, sex-based stereotypes and class. Development in the late 19th century of modern hospital medicine, combined with a scientific understanding of antisepsis and asepsis, hygiene, contagion prevention and germ theory, were highly influential insights to the dominant position of modern medicine in health care. This development constituted a key premise for what nurses, by virtue of being women, and combined (...) with their education, could offer in terms of medical assistance. It enabled them to challenge the prevailing sex-based stereotypes- and class-based hierarchies, allowing modern nursing to retain aspects of both traditional Christian and womanly values, while at the same time adhering to the medical science paradigm. In this paper, we argue that modern nursing education developed in a context characterized by traditional female and religious values, while at the same time being increasingly dominated by the influence of scientific and medical progress. This conflict between traditional and modern values caused dilemmas and tensions as the nursing profession developed. We argue further that similar dilemmas and tensions continue to pervade contemporary nursing and nursing education. (shrink)

In this article we explore how Swedish welfare politics within health‐care and rehabilitation has opened up a space for nurses’ and occupational therapists’ professional projects. Using historical data, an analysis of the policy‐making process behind welfare programs central to the professionalization of nursing and occupational therapy is presented. The time period covered is, in the case of nurses, the larger part of the twentieth century, while the modern history of occupational therapists first began in the 1940s. Special emphasis (...) is placed on the corporative nature of the Swedish welfare state and the professional strategies utilized by nurses and occupational therapists in their struggle for jurisdiction. In the article, politicization is identified as a core strategy by which female‐dominated welfare state occupations in Sweden have tried to gain influence over the welfare policy‐making process and their occupations’ jurisdiction. (shrink)

Nursing claims a significant history of engaging philosophical inquiry. To better understand the rationale for this engagement, and what nursing understands itself to achieve through philosophical inquiry, we conducted an interpretive synthesis of the recent nursing literature to identify what nurses are doing when they say they are doing philosophy. The overarching finding was that while vanishingly few articles articulated any definition of philosophy, the synthesis showed how nursing considers philosophical engagement a generative mode for (...) asking and answering questions in/for nursing. Whatever aspects of nursing were focused on in these articles, and they were myriad, philosophy was invoked as an appropriate modality to work through that aspect rigorously, critically, and with an expectation that something “knowledgeable” would result from the effort. Based on the synthesis, we conclude that nursing philosophy could be considered a specific modality of nursing practice by which nursing is both done and delineated, a discursive practice in which we continually assess and explore and adapt and advance our understanding of the discipline in service to advancing our unique efficacy. This definition of “nursing philosophy” provides an opening for further inquiry helping to illuminate its functionalities and potentialities for outputs that can facilitate rigorous practice, education, and scholarship. (shrink)

Nursing faces an uncertain future as technological developments, structural changes within health systems and rapidly evolving health needs create new and challenging possibilities. This article draws on the results of a qualitative study undertaken with a range of Queensland nurse leaders to explore their perceptions of these changes. The study re‐surfaced, and allows for a re‐examination of, four issues that have long created tension within nursing and which continue to have a negative impact on the profession as a (...) whole. These are as follows: professionalisation; preparation of graduates; myths and narratives of nursing; and leadership. We provide a metaphor that imagines all of these tensions operating in dynamic interplay. The image is that of a Newton's Cradle – a model for energy and momentum. The metaphor allows one to see the wide context of changes affecting nursing and the significance of the interconnections. If tensions within nursing maintain their own integrity through containment, understanding and development, they remain in alignment, and energy is conserved rather than wasted or misdirected. It suggests that with increased awareness and attention paid to internal challenges, and by taking a broad‐based approach to systemic improvements, nursing could become more effective, progressive and proactive in shaping its own future. (shrink)

The history of Western foreign policy in the Middle East has long assimilated Arab culture to sickness. Specifically, the biological episteme of “contamination” has shaped American foreign policy in the Gulf for decades. In so doing, the US Government continually borrowed references from the natural sciences to frame its foreign policy, leading some commentators to claim that biology supplanted philosophy and religion as the primary political category. The article analyses the semantics of Iraqnophobic metaphors, from the British experience of (...) “nursing” Arabs at the close of the First World War to the recent “shock doctrine” of American therapists. First, the paper will concentrate its attention on the metaphors of disinfection and surgical resection. Second, it will address the metaphors of lustration, State-rearing and scientific recovery. Finally, it will explore Iraqis’ rebellion against their self-appointed tutors and doctors. Elaborating on the belligerents’ nursing and biomedical metaphors, the following pages address the life cycle of foreign “legal transplantation”, “antibody” resistance and “immunosuppressant” counterinsurgency in Iraq. (shrink)

This historical study aims to refine understanding of the nature of nursing work. The study focuses on the 1880 crisis at Guy's Hospital in London to examine the nature and meaning of nursing work, particularly the concept of nursing work as many ‘little things.’ In this paper, an examination of Margaret Lonsdale's writing offers an original contribution to our understanding of the ways in which nursing work differs from medical practice. In this way, we use the (...) late-nineteenth-century controversy at Guy's Hospital as a prism through which to examine the contested nature of nursing work. Lonsdale's ideas are corroborated by examination of writings by nurse leaders Florence Nightingale and Eva Luckes. Luckes, in particular, elaborated what was meant by nursing as the performance of a thousand little things, which are specific to nursing work. While physicians had been performing much of what was considered to be nursing work, nurses developed some of these and other interventions into a unique body of work characterized by meticulous attention to significant details. Some implications regarding current nursing practice are discussed. (shrink)

Netley Hospital played a crucial role in caring for the wounded during the nineteenth century and twentieth century, becoming one of the busiest military hospitals of the time. Simultaneously, Florence Nightingale delved into the concept of health and developed the theoretical basis of nursing. This research aims to describe the experiences related to nursing and patient care described in The Netley British Red Cross Magazine during the First World War. The analysis displays different nurses' roles and the influence (...) of environmental factors in the delivery of the soldiers' care. There are indications that Nightingale's ideas would have infiltrated the nursing practices and other aspects of the soldiers' recovery at Netley. The history of the Netley Red Cross Hospital shows the theoretical and practical advancement of nursing care towards a holistic approach. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to re‐examine nursing work from a Marxist perspective by means of a critique of two key concepts within nursing: autonomy and caring. Although Marx wrote over 150 years ago, many see continuing relevance to his theories. His concepts of capital, ideology and class antagonism are employed in this paper. Nursing's historical insertion into the developing hospital system is seen in terms of a loss of autonomy covered over by the development of (...) cults of loyalty toward those institutions, while the concept of emotional labour is used to re‐examine nursing's high valuing of “caring” and to understand it as potentially exploitative of nurses. Raising awareness of this alternative way of understanding nursing work can become a first step toward change. (shrink)

Objectives To describe the form and content of ethics policies on euthanasia in Flemish nursing homes and to determine the possible influence of religious affiliation on policy content. Methods Content analysis of euthanasia policy documents. Results Of the 737 nursing homes we contacted, 612 (83%) completed and returned the questionnaire. Of 92 (15%) nursing homes that reported to have a euthanasia policy, 85 (92%) provided a copy of their policy. Nursing homes applied the euthanasia law with (...) additional palliative procedures and interdisciplinary deliberations. More Catholic nursing homes compared to non-Catholic nursing homes did not permit euthanasia. Policies described several phases of the euthanasia care process as well as involvement of caregivers, patients, and relatives; ethical issues; support for caregivers; reporting; and procedures for handling advance directives. Conclusion Our study revealed that euthanasia requests from patients are seriously considered in euthanasia policies of nursing homes, with great attention for palliative care and interdisciplinary cooperation. (shrink)

The art of stained glass: metaphor for the art of nursingThe aesthetic is a way of knowing the meaning of and the meaning in the art of nursing. The art of creating stained glass offers a personal metaphor for nursing's essence; the art of caring. Both arts aim to fulfil the potential of their subjects to achieve a harmony that goes beyond their individual components. Stained glass artistry and caring in nursing require technical expertise, yet technical skill (...) and knowledge are not the substance of either art. Both transcend space and time, and the art of stained glass and the art of nursing are influenced by the artist's/nurse's personal, social and cultural history. Just as die artisan transforms the glass and lead and is transformed in the creative moment, so does the caring transaction transform both patient and nurse. This personal reflection explores the nature of caring in nursing as mirrored by the author's work with stained glass. (shrink)

The purpose of this contemporary history study is to analyse nursing strategy documents produced by NHS Trusts in England in the period 2009–2013, through a process of discourse analysis. In 2013 the Francis Report on the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust was published. The Report highlighted the full range of organisational failures in a Trust that valued financial efficiency over patient care. The analysis that followed, however, dwelt heavily on the failings of the nurses. Nursing strategy documents at (...) that time served to set the future direction for NHS Trusts, prescribing specific value frameworks for each nursing workforce. However, the values chosen frequently conflicted with each other pitting nursing values against a managerial trope. It is argued that documents provided a response to wider NHS concerns and high-profile failures in care, particularly the Francis Report, paying lip service to staff engagement whilst maintaining a corporate focus. Nursing values were placed firmly within a managerialist discourse, one that has needed to be re-evaluated in the current Covid-19 pandemic. Wider implications of the research suggest discussion of value conflict may be beneficial within nursing education and a truly local approach to strategy creation would potentially promote staff buy-in to strategy documents. (shrink)

During the Nazi regime (1933–1945), more than 300 000 psychiatric patients were killed. The well‐calculated killing of chronic mentally ‘ill’ patients was part of a huge biopolitical program of well‐established scientific, eugenic standards of the time. Among the medical personnel implicated in these assassinations were nurses, who carried out this program through their everyday practice. However, newer research raises suspicions that psychiatric patients were being assassinated before and after the Nazi regime, which, I hypothesize, implies that the motives for these (...) killings must be investigated within psychiatric practice itself. An investigation of the impact of the interplay between the notes left by nurses and those by psychiatrists illustrates the active role of the psychiatric medical record in the killing of these patients. Using theoretical insights from Michel Foucault and philosopher Giorgio Agamben and analyzing one part of a particularly rich patient file found in the Langenhorn Psychiatric Asylum in the city of Hamburg, I demonstrate the role of the record in both constructing and deconstructing patient subjectivities. De‐subjectifying patients condemned them to specific zones in the asylum within which they were reduced to their ‘bare life’‐ a precondition for their physical assassination. (shrink)

This paper considers the use of textual analysis of oral histories as a method for historians of nursing. Fifty‐three oral histories of retired nurses in midwestern USA were analyzed for the purpose of historical reconstruction of past education experiences in nursing. Textual analysis was used to determine how nurses made sense of their educational experiences, and it involved gathering data, analyzing the information, and using a different method of interpreting the data. Although the participants responded to specific questions, (...) the oral histories in this study are more than mere answers to the researchers’ queries. The participants’ memories are narratives that are the joint product of both the historian and the participant. As such, the oral history becomes a text to be stored along with other primary sources for future historians’ use. The research also suggests decentering oral histories from an exclusively academic agenda and focusing more on what the participants choose to remember and why they make those choices. (shrink)