Philip A. Kalisch

Dressing for success

*ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS DRESSING FOR SUCCESS* The individual school’s administration/designees shall be the final judge of wearing apparel/accessories. They will determine whether or not such is appropriate, disruptive, offensive, distracting or in violation of health and safety rules. No clothing/accessories are permitted that promote drugs, tobacco, alcohol or violence. School spirit shirts may be worn on designated days. If not listed below, the student is out of dress code. All students may wear:

Sex-role stereotyping of nurses and physicians on prime-time television: A dichotomy of occupational portrayals

Utilizing the methodology of content analysis, this study investigates the sexrole variables in prime-time television portrayals of nurses and physicians from 1950 to 1980. A 20% sample of 28 relevant series yielded 320 individual episodes, 240 nurse characters, and 287 physicians characters. Results show extreme levels of both sexual and occupational stereotyping. Television nurses are 99% female, and television physicians are 95% male. The cluster of sex and occupational role characteristics, personality attributes, primary values, career orientation, professional competencies, and the tone of nurse-physician relationships converge to yield an image of the female professional nurse as totally dependent on and subservient to male physicians. The development of this dichotomous sex and occupational role imagery has resulted in male television physicians who not only have outstanding medical competencies but also embrace all the attractive competencies of professional nurses. Television nurses largely serve as window dressing on the set and have little opportunity to contribute to patient welfare. Action is needed to improve the quality of nurse portrayals by making them more congruent with the real world of work in health care.

Intrahospital transport of neuro ICU patients.

&NA; Neuroscience intensive care unit (NICU) patients are frequently transported out of the critical care environment for diagnostic and interventional procedures. Four hundred and seventy‐one such transports from seventeen clinical centers were studied to identify the characteristics of intrahospital transport. Data collected included the destination and duration of transport, number and type of personnel involved, changes in monitoring and treatment during transport, adverse patient responses and the impact on patients left in the unit. Differences between transports characterized as elective or emergent in nature were noted. Results validate that intrahospital transport of NICU patients is both time and labor intensive. The study also suggests that the optimal process for safe and efficient transport is yet to be designed.

LOUYSE BOURGEOIS AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN MIDWIFERY

Abstract As a contribution to establishing the antecedents of nurse-midwifery, this article focuses on the career of Louyse Bourgeois (1563–1636), a major figure in the history of modern midwifery. She was the first midwife to publish a book on obstetrics and the first to publish on midwifery. Within her writings she outlined clear guidelines for sound clinical practice and articulated an ethical code to govern the practice of midwives. For example, Bourgeois recommended induced labor in cases of contracted pelvis; she was the first to discuss the management of umbilical prolapse; she offered a detailed description of face presentation and its management; and she was the first to cut the cord between two ligatures, when it was wrapped about the neck. She was an ambitious woman, not only for her personal advancement but for the advancement of female midwives as a group. More than 350 years ago she called for improvements in the training of midwives and saw the value of providing midwives with theoretical framework in support of clinical practice. As midwife to the Queen of France and to other influential families, Bourgeois took advantage of every opportunity to improve her own position and that of her calling. Her eventual fall from prominence, due to attacks by physicians and surgeons, is remarkably similar to the emotional conflict that surrounds present day nurse-midwife and medical profession confrontations over practice issues.

Forecasting for nursing policy: a news-based image approach.

A prototype of a news-based forecasting model was developed as an aid to policy-making in nursing and to assist in setting priorities for promoting an effective image of nursing. Newspaper articles about nursing were analyzed each month from 1978 to 1981. A model, constructed to show the effects of key nursing issues on the image of nursing, was estimated using Ridge Regression to determine the direction and magnitude of the effect that each of the key issues had on the image of nursing. It was determined that newspaper articles that show nurses In clinical settings and articles that show nurses as playing a major role are the most important factors in projecting a positive image of nursing. The model was used to construct forecasts for the image of nursing from 1982 to 1984. The image of nursing was forecasted to improve over this period, primarily because of a projected increase in the number of articles that show nurses in this positive image.

Communicating Clinical Nursing Issues Through the Newspaper

The information quality of nursing news is a critical factor in gaining public support for the acquisition of scarce resources necessary to undergird clinical nursing practice. A content analysis of 3,098 newspaper articles about nursing in 1978 was employed to examine the treatment of clinical nursing news. Among the variables studied were practice settings, educational levels, role clarity, professional activities, nurse-physician relationships, and degree of favorable image. Results revealed that the quality of news about clinical nursing varied by specialties, with maternity nursing and pediatric nursing news shown to be more progressive and community health nursing and medical-surgical nursing revealed as quite traditional. Psychiatric nursing received an inordinately low level of news coverage. Recommendations are offered to assist improvement in the amount and quality of news treatment of clinical nursing.

An analysis of news flow on the nation's nurse shortage.

Using data from national newspaper clipping services, this article analyzes characteristics of 1978 news coverage of the nations nurse shortage. Based on a content analysis of nearly 3,000 newspaper articles, findings revealed that 14 per cent of the articles mentioned problems of nurse supply. Articles on nurse shortage were most frequent in the Pacific, Mid–Atlantic and South–Atlantic states and occurred least in the West–North Central and East–South Central states. Articles mentioning nurse shortage were more frequently placed on page 1, associated with clinical nursing in hospital settings and explained as the result of maldistribution of nurses, poor salaries, deficient working conditions and lack of job satisfaction. The reading public was confronted with three major consequences of current and continued shortages in nursing: 1) decline in the availability and diversity of health services; 2) erosion in the quality of care offered the public and jeopardized patient welfare; and 3) escalating health care costs. Solutions to the nurse shortage appear to be closely tied to further expansion of the issue among the public, the initiation of remedial governmental action and timely relocation of scarce resources within the health care industry.

Heroines of '98: female Army nurses in the Spanish-American war.

Experiences of female Army nurses—their devotion to duty, contributions, and successes as well as their trials, tribulations, and sufferings—during the Spanish-American War and afterwards are described. How service by the heroines of ’98 led to a change of attitude by the Army Medical Department is sketched. At the beginning of the War with Spain, the Medical Department had been reluctant to use female nurses; by the end of the war, the nurses had so demonstrated their value that Congress established permanent Army Reserve Nurse Corps.

An Analysis of the Controversy over the Nurses?? Selective Service Bill of 1945

A critical set of events in the history of nursing, pertaining to the need to draft nurses during World War II, is delineated. Congressional deliberations and professional reactions are outlined along with an appraisal of the traumatic events.

Nurses in American history. The Cadet Nurse Corps-in World War II.

greater than ever. As the war picked up in tempo in late 1942, the wounded were arriving from abroad in increasing numbers; a bumper crop of babies and their mothers needed professional care; war boom areas were in desperate need of public health nurses; and through the new hospitalization insurance plans, millions of people in the country were receiving hospital care who had hitherto been unable to afford it.