This I Believe about Nursing in a Changing World

Abstract

Editor's Note Katharine J. Densford, RN, MA, DSc(h), LLD(h) (later Katharine Densford Dreves), director of the University of Minnesota School of Nursing from 1930 to 1959, was an independent and visionary woman who changed the face of nursing in Minnesota and across the globe. She held offices in almost every nursing organization of the time and, more importantly, she was an agent for social change. Through her influence, the School of Nursing helped redefine how leadership could benefit patients, nursing, and health care. Her life work epitomized leadership at the local, state, national, and international levels. As an ethicist and thought leader, her legacy is well respected throughout the profession. In this Creative Nursing issue on Sharing Governance, we are reprinting an article by her that is as relevant today as it was when written in 1964. Living, as my generation has been, in a climate of continuing revolution, it is difficult to state the changing beliefs of my seventy-two years. Most of them are inherent in our culture and apply to me as person and as nurse. My most basic beliefs through the years have clustered around the principle of faith: faith in God, in country, in people. Had I been born elsewhere I might have been a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, an atheist. As it was, I was reared in a Christian home in mid-America, with an inheritance on one side from practical, substantial farmers, and on the other from ministers, lawyers, teachers, engineers. Our home was marked by a sense of purpose. Each member of the family had duties and responsibilities in the home and in the larger community, and the dignity of even the youngest (I was that one) was of moment. Faith in country means to me faith in the democratic way of life. More than most, this country has given value to the individual. It has aimed at the ideal of democracy, which recognizes the "inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family." This ideal is one in which I have an abiding faith, and it is one which I have tried to promote in all my nursing activities. Believing as I do that the democratic way of life is a good one; that democratic practices are something we must continue to work at; and that we must accept responsibility for maintaining those segments of freedom we now have-of press, speech, and worship, to name but a few-I subscribe to the belief that education of youth (and adults) is the foundation of the democratic way of life. For this reason I believe in our efforts to liberalize the education of professional people, including nurses. All this in order that they may have not only the tools of their profession, but also the general education needed for responsible citizenship, and the informed judgment needed in a world community in which professionals are playing increasingly important parts. In the context of world service, nursing-the oldest international organization of professional women in the world-with its absence of political and racial barriers, is helping to direct the changing world to the service of mankind. Faith in people is a key to many satisfactions. We build together. I salute all who, through the years, have been builders in our chosen profession. …