Multiple pathways to nursing scholarship

Abstract

Scholarship in the history of nursing has commonly emerged from the academic discipline of nursing studies and from nursing history networks. In this talk I explain a different pathway and a personal journey. From the time of my doctoral studies in Oxford, when my intellectual home was the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, my field of study has been defined as the social history of medicine. Yet, through each of my major projects within the discipline - tuberculosis, paediatrics, and childbirth - nurses consistently emerged centre stage, in some instances even influencing medical decisions and health policies, helping to explain the very nature of past health care. This pathway eventually led to involvement in a nursing oral history project, to record the nurses’ own stories. It is my contention that nursing history should not be considered separately from the social or cultural history of health and medicine, but as an integral part of it.