How our history can change our future

Penn Nursing is proud to have hosted the American Association for the History of Nursing's 25th annual conference, from September 25th-28th. Nursing history is truly dynamic and relevant to our discipline, and we are pleased to be part of the conference's milestone celebration.

Here, too, we are celebrating various milestones in our School – 50 years of our Sigma Theta Tau chapter, 30 years of doctoral education, 20 years of the Penn Nursing Consultation Service, and 10 years of the LIFE program. These serve as reminders of how the historical context is vital for understanding our contemporary goals for integrating research, education, and practice. Milestone celebrations are a cause for reflection and celebration.

As AAHN celebrates the 25th anniversary of its conference, it is important to pause and recognize the tremendous progress that has been made in historical research and in making nursing history dynamic and relevant to our discipline. As professor Julie Fairman, the director of our Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, puts it, how can we think about strategies to relieve health disparities if we don't understand how they developed, what has and has not worked in the past, and how we can use this information to make a better future for everyone?

We are living in a time when our discipline faces many challenges, such as lack of diversity, proliferation of degrees, integrating technology with humanistic tools and science with theory. A historical context can inform how we may resolve these issues and more without making the same mistakes of the past.

Understanding our history allows us to make a difference in quality of care we provide and in the caliber of science and scholarship we produce. That is why I am so proud of the many awards given to our own students and faculty at the AAHN conference. A very special congratulations to:

• Winifred Connerton, recipient of a History of Nursing H-30 Pre-Doctoral Student Research Award entitled, "Have cap, will travel; U.S. nurses abroad 1898-1939," (chair, Julie Fairman).

• Cindy Connolly, recipient of the Livinia L. Dock Award for her book, Saving Sickly Children: The Tuberculosis Preventorium in American Life, 1909-1970 ( Rutgers, 2008). This Award is given to an author of a book noted for its outstanding research and writing.

• Patricia D’Antonio, recipient of the Adelaide Nutting Award for her article, “Nurses—and Wives and Mothers: Women and the Latter Day Saints Training School’s Class of 1919,” Journal of Women’s History. This award is given to an author of a post-doctoral article on the history of nursing.

• Jennifer Hobbs, recipient of the Teresa E. Christy Award for excellence of historical research and writing done while the researcher was a doctoral student. The title of Jennifer’s research is, “Naming Power: A Historical Analysis of Clinical Information Systems,” chair, Julie Fairman.

• Barbra Mann Wall, recipient of a H15 Grant for Historical Research. Her project is titled, “Clash and Compromise: Catholic Hospitals, Secularization, and the State in 20th Century America."