Too Many Students,
Too Few
Jobs for Graduates |
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Overworked as a student,
unemployed as a graduate.
The willingness of young women to exchange their labor for an opportunity to become
professional nurses encouraged hospital administrators to increase the number and the size of
their schools. Nursing students, intelligent, young, obedient and dedicated, provided hospitals an
ideal cheap labor force.
During the 1920s, the economic conditions for most graduate nurses were grim. To address this
problem, ANA, with other organizations, sponsored a series of national studies beginning with
the Goldmark report on nursing education in 1923. Later, in 1928, it investigated the economic
status of graduates in the Burgess study.
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Decentralization of the
ANA
Relief Fund
The Relief Fund, initiated by ANA in 1910 to help ill nurses, became more important in the
1920s as more nurses found themselves unemployed and without savings. To assist those most in
need, the ANA turned the administration of the fund over to the state associations.
"In appreciation of their help, one wrote to say: 'This
help has meant life itself to me.' "
"Heroism and the Relief Fund," AJN
(1923), p. 107
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National Concern for Mothers and
Infants: The Sheppard-Towner Act -- 1921
Realizing that maternal-infant mortality rates were shockingly high in rural communities, the
Children's Bureau, supported by the ANA, petitioned Congress to establish maternal and infant
health services.
"Nurses do love nursing, but they want nursing to be, in
so far as possible, a profession, and the things they stress when they talk about the economic
conditions under which they work ... are those things which other professional workers take for
granted:
- Reasonable hours,
- Adequate income,
- Constructive leadership,
- Opportunity for growth."
May Ayres Burgess, Nurses, Patients and Pocketbooks (1928), p.
482
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Insulin is discovered in
1922
The discovery of insulin revolutionized medical care for diabetes. Articles updating nurses on the
latest discovery began to appear in AJN.
"Insulin is now being furnished to physicians
throughout the country, who specialize in the treatment of diabetes ... Properly used, it enables
the diabetic to regain his place as an active member of society and gives him a hopeful, happy
outlook."
Nellie Brown, "The Use of Insulin in the Treatment of Diabetes
Mellitus," AJN (1923), vol. 24, pp 8-12
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Copyright 1996 American Nurses
Association, 600 Maryland Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20024-2571
All rights reserved. No reproduction without permission of
ANA. |
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