American Nursing: A History of Knowledge, Authority, and the Meaning of Work

Awards:   Winner of American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Awards: History and Public Policy Category 2010 Winner of American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Awards: History and Public Policy Category 2010. Winner of Christianity & Literature Book of the Year Award 2010 (United States)
Author:   Patricia D'Antonio (Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing)
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN:  

9780801895654


Pages:   272
Publication Date:   05 September 2010
Recommended Age:   From 13
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

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American Nursing: A History of Knowledge, Authority, and the Meaning of Work


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Awards

  • Winner of American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Awards: History and Public Policy Category 2010
  • Winner of American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Awards: History and Public Policy Category 2010.
  • Winner of Christianity & Literature Book of the Year Award 2010 (United States)

Overview

This new interpretation of the history of nursing in the United States captures the many ways women reframed the most traditional of all gender expectations-that of caring for the sick-to create new possibilities for themselves, to renegotiate the terms of some of their life experiences, and to reshape their own sense of worth and power. For much of modern U.S. history, nursing was informal, often uncompensated, and almost wholly the province of female family and community members. This began to change at the end of the nineteenth century when the prospect of formal training opened for women doors that had been previously closed. Nurses became respected professionals, and becoming a formally trained nurse granted women a range of new social choices and opportunities that eventually translated into economic mobility and stability. Patricia D'Antonio looks closely at this history-using a new analytic framework and a rich trove of archival sources-and finds complex, multiple meanings in the individual choices of women who elected a nursing career. New relationships and social and professional options empowered nurses in constructing consequential lives, supporting their families, and participating both in their communities and in the health care system. Narrating the experiences of nurses, D'Antonio captures the possibilities, power, and problems inherent in the different ways women defined their work and lived their lives. Scholars in the history of medicine, nursing, and public policy, those interested in the intersections of identity, work, gender, education, and race, and nurses will find this a provocative book.

Full Product Details

Author:   Patricia D'Antonio (Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing)
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.40cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.386kg
ISBN:  

9780801895654


ISBN 10:   0801895650
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   05 September 2010
Recommended Age:   From 13
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Nurses and Physicians in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia 2. Competence, Coolness, Courage—and Control 3. They Went Nursing—in Early Twentieth-Century America 4. Wives, Mothers—and Nurses 5. Race, Place, and Professional Identity 6. A Tale of Two Associations: White and African AmericanNurses in North Carolina 7. Who Is a Nurse? Appendix Notes Essay on Sources Index

Reviews

A valuable resource and an excellent addition to any library's collection for those interested in the history of nursing and the struggle of a profession to become autonomous. Doody's Review Service This new book is both a remarkable story about a noble profession and a rich illustration of the important place of the scholarly press. -- Dan Doody MedInfoNow A rich analysis. Bookwatch The vignettes in this book provoke images of nurses not as powerless but rather as strong, often independent, women who take life fully into their own hands. -- Peter I. Buerhaus JAMA [D'Antonio] posits that people chose nursing because of the meaning and power that a nursing identity brought to their lives within both family and community and over a lifetime. Choice Ambitious history of women and work... The strengths of this book are many. -- Susan L. Smith American Historical Review


A valuable resource and an excellent addition to any library's collection for those interested in the history of nursing and the struggle of a profession to become autonomous. Doody's Review Service 2010 This new book is both a remarkable story about a noble profession and a rich illustration of the important place of the scholarly press. -- Dan Doody MedInfoNow 2010 A rich analysis. Bookwatch 2010 The vignettes in this book provoke images of nurses not as powerless but rather as strong, often independent, women who take life fully into their own hands. -- Peter I. Buerhaus JAMA 2010 Recommended. Choice 2011


This will become the book on the history of nursing. - Susan M. Reverby, Wellesley College


Author Information

Patricia D'Antonio is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and the associate director of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is a Senior Fellow with the Leonard Davis Institute. She is an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Manchester's School of Nursing, Midwifery, and Social Work; a coeditor of Nurses' Work: Issues across Time and Place and Enduring Issues in American Nursing, and the author of Founding Friends: Families, Staff, and Patients at the Friends Asylum in Early Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia.

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