Influenza-1918.

Abstract

Editor's note: From its first issue in 1900 through to the present day, AJN has unparalleled archives detailing nurses' work and lives over more than a century. These articles not only chronicle nursing's growth as a profession within the context of the events of the day, but they also reveal prevailing societal attitudes about women, health care, and human rights. Today's nursing school curricula rarely include nursing's history, but it's a history worth knowing. To this end, From the AJN Archives highlights articles selected to fit today's topics and times. This month's article is by public health expert Dorothy Deming, whose many roles over her long career included director of the Visiting Nurse Association in Holyoke, Massachusetts; editor of Public Health Nursing; and author of the Penny Marsh: Public Health Nurse series for young adult readers. In her October 1957 AJN article, Deming recalls her experiences as a nursing student in New York City during the 1918 influenza pandemic. She and a classmate managed a 32-bed women's influenza unit through 12-hour night shifts, a "baptism of fire for a young nurse," she writes. Deming describes shifts that sound eerily familiar given today's COVID-19 pandemic: overcrowded units, staff shortages, patients whose condition could change "in split seconds," and the emotional impact of working under these conditions. For more on COVID-19 in this issue, see "Standardizing the Accommodations Process for Health Care Workers During COVID-19."-Betsy Todd, MPH, RN.