Inspiration and Guidance

Abstract

Thank you for inviting me to join this panel and this program in honor of Joan. And, thank you Joan, for all that you have done for me and my career. With the exception of my mentor and friend Barbara Brodie, who introduced me to the world of nursing history in the first place, no one has influenced my career as much as you have!Little did I realize how much my professional life would change with my first presentation at the 5th Annual American Association for the History of Nursing (AAHN) conference. It was 1988-almost a quarter of a cen- tury ago! Then a second year doctoral student, I was presenting at AAHN for the first time-and was quite nervous as I recall. My topic was The Human Side of High Tech Care: A History of Coronary Care in the United States, 1941-1970. Julie Fairmans talk on the history of ICU nursing in the United States preceded mine, and as I approached the podium, I distinctly recall thinking that there was no need for me to give my paper at all since she had come to the same conclusions as I had and had covered the topic very nicely. Nonetheless, I muddled through and afterward met Dr. Lynaugh, who made very positive and supportive comments. Her comments, combined with my growing interest in nursing history from Barbara Brodies course and my attendance at AAHN meetings, led me to an increasingly strong feeling that I should be doing nursing history rather than a clinical research project in cardiac nursing for my dissertation. However, in my opinion in 1988, the timing was wrong; it was simply too late to change focus.Here I must segue to note that over the course of my career, I've looked to Joans editorials in Nursing History Review for inspiration and guidance-and on rereading them in preparation for this talk, was struck by her comments on timing. she noted in one editorial: As a historian, I am inclined to believe that, while timing may not be everything, it is a crucial variable in human affairs. In my case, whether or not it really was not good timing is open to debate, but I stayed with clinical cardiac nursing for my dissertation.I graduated with a PhD in 1992, the same year that Barbara Brodie, Sylvia Rinker, and I opened the Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry. And, as Bar- bara will tell you later today, Lynaugh played a pivotal role in its incep- tion, advising us to focus on an active Center that fostered scholarly inquiry rather than hosting a museum. To us, from Day 1 the mission was clear: we needed grants and publications to prove the worthiness of nursing history as an area of study. alluded to the necessity for scholarly publications in her very first editorial in the Nursing History Review writing: The first volume . . . marks a significant next step toward assuring vigorous and useful scholarship in nursing history-in other words, what counted would be peer-reviewed publications in a journal whose impact factor could later be measured.Convinced that in addition to publications in well-respected journals, I would need external funding to assure the validity of my new focus on his- tory, I applied for a KO 1 from the National Institute for Nursing Research-a postdoctoral fellowship to prepare me as a nurse historian and to study the history of coronary care nursing. I turned to to serve as the external mentor. According to Barbara Brodie, who no doubt had been working on this behind the scenes: Joan Lynaugh thinks you might have some potential and has agreed to work with you.Months later, I received news of the grant, and was of course delighted with the funding, but somewhat amazed at the congratulations I was receiving from my colleagues at Penn. Being a very new assistant professor, I actually didn't really understand the significance of the Κ award. I was just happy to get the funding and begin a new phase of scholarship. That said, the grant opened the door to a unique and very gratifying professional relationship with Lynaugh. …