A Colleague’s Salute to Joan Lynaugh

Abstract

Thank you for including me in this lovely salute to a trail blazing nurse histo- rian, professional nurse, teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend. My only regret about this day is that two very important people to nursing history, to Joan, and to all of us-the incomparable Barbara Bates and Karen Buhler-Wilkerson- are not with us to enjoy it. They would have loved today and would have had words of wisdom and humor to share about Joan and her legacy.I first met Joan at the University of Rochester in 1973 when I visited Harriet Kitzman to learn about their Pediatric Nurse Practitioner program and research. Harriet suggested I meet Joan, the director of their Advance Nurse Practice program, because she too was creating a new practitioner role for nurses and was successfully dealing with some of the challenges inherent in placing nurses into an area traditionally considered the sole province of medi- cine. Together, we briefly spoke of the problems inherent in this new role and our admiration of the young nurses who were eagerly preparing themselves for clinical practice and leadership in the nurse practitioner movement. I believe {by noiv) enough time has passed for us to be able to claim that nurse practi- tioners forged a vital new role for nurses, and in doing so they significantly changed the role of nurses and the care they provided patients. I believe they truly reshaped nursing education and the health care system.Ten years later, I met Joan at an American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM) conference at Duke University. I was teaching a history of nursing and medicine course in the University of Virginias new PhD Nursing program and I was at the conference to learn as much as possible about the history of medicine. I knew no one in the AAHM, so when I saw Joan I was elated. She graciously took me it tow and immediately introduced me to four medical historians whose names I recognized from their books that I had read. Through the rest of the conference, she introduced me to about 25 other his- torians and I began to wonder if she knew every medical and nursing historian in the country.I soon learned that Joan has a rich social network of names of medical historians in the United States and abroad and that through this network she was introducing young nurse historians to scholars who were most knowl- edgeable about their particular field of interest. So phenomenal is her grasp of the names of medical and nursing historians, their work, and their areas of interest that I soon began to encourage nurse historians to speak to Joan about their study and need for additional sources of information. Thus, I have long been treating Joan as the Google of nursing and health history . . . just ask her a question and she will direct you to the important historical studies perti- nent to your subject and the historians who have or are working on this topic.From the 1970s onward, our paths crossed frequently at conferences, meetings, and workshops of the recently formed American Association for the History of Nursing (AAHN) organization. Many of the AAHN's meetings were held in Philadelphia and Joan invited me to stay at her home that she shared with Barbara Bates. Over dinner, wine, and stimulating and funny conversations, I met many of their friends and learned that Joan was not only a well-trained medical historian but was also very insightful on what needed to be accomplished to create a cadre of educated nurses capable of histori- cal studies that documented and analyzed the development of the nursing profession. During our frequent conversations, we explored what kinds of organizations were needed that would allow us to enhance the vitality and productivity of nurse historians.As I read more of her work and listened to her presentations and com- ments, I was impressed with Joan's deep commitment to making nursing his- tory a scholarly field of study and of her leadership skills. At this point I began to see Joan as an excellent evangelist for nursing history. …