Barbara - The Original Healers

Barbara -







I always wanted to be a nurse; I never wanted to be anything else. I filled my high school curriculum with science so I could go to nursing school. But my mother insisted I go to university, so after completing a three-year nursing program, I went through a baccalaureate program specifically for nurses. I wound up getting a degree in history. Two years later, I got my master’s degree, and eventually sought a doctorate in healthcare administration and women’s studies.

I chose women’s studies because historically there has been a lot of male/female tension between doctors and nurses. Until very recently, physicians have been predominantly male while nurses historically have been and continue to be about 97% female. Although the gender demographics in medicine is changing, there’s been this on-going tension around collaboration that some people would like to continue to attribute to doctors being mostly male and nurses mostly female. I was of the belief that it couldn’t be just a male/female thing; that there had to be more to the tension than gender.

I did a lot of work on the history and evolution of nursing in the United States throughout its 100-plus year history. I wanted to be able to rethink the relationship between physicians and nurses and account for the communication challenges, status differences, and the perception that being a doctor is more important than being a nurse, or that nurses are subservient to doctors. I wanted to explain it in a way that was different than simply saying, doctors are boys, nurses are girls.

My research showed that women were the original healers during ancient times, but that during the course of our history men usurped their roles. I learned traditionally men had access to formal education that women didn’t have. Things have changed over time. For example, hospitals in the US were traditionally run by women – mostly nuns – until the 1940’s. Around the late 1940’s and early 50’s, following World War II, men returned to the workforce and took over hospital administration roles. It was a job opportunity for them, and it was lucrative to run hospitals.

Prior to that, women were very much at the forefront in hospital administration and the application of science to care - Florence Nightingale’s work is a strong and popular example. Women had played a leadership role for which they obviously didn’t get much credit. Today, many people think hospitals have always been run by men, but because of my doctoral research I know that is not the case.

Getting a PhD in this area has helped me to see the leadership world through a different set of lenses. It gives me the ability to interact and communicate more effectively with my colleagues, most of whom are men.“The work that nurses do is not more or less valuable than what the physician does – it’s just a different contribution.” I’m a chief nurse now, and although the nurses I supervise are mostly women, the heads of the organizations I deal with are mostly male. We probably have the same goals and objectives, but we have different ways of getting there and we figure out a mutually agreeable way to arrive. It is safe to say physicians categorically and clearly want to do the right thing by the patient. They want to give the best care and to be good at what they do. Most physicians recognize that nurses have the exact same goals. They just haven’t always appreciated us as a partner in healthcare. The work that nurses do is not more or less valuable than what the physician does – it’s just a different contribution.

Nurses’ work has been described as being “invisible.” People don’t see it, not in the way they do a physician’s work. If you can’t see it, you can’t count it. It’s hard to quantify. And if you can’t quantify it, you can’t attach a cost to it. And if you can’t attach a cost to it, you don’t necessarily want to pay for it. So in the end, you don’t understand its value.

It has only been in the last 20 years or so that nurses have come to understand this and have begun the effort to quantify their work in order to demonstrate its value. If you ask people what they think about the work of nurses, those who can best respond are the ones who’ve had experience with nursing care. Either they or a loved one has been very sick, and they’ve seen what nurses can do to take care of that person. But if you haven’t experienced nursing care personally, it’s hard for most people to understand.

I’m really passionate about the value that nurses bring to the care of patients. I think that physicians are very good at diagnosing and treating, but it’s really nurses who shepherd the patient through the journey, particularly those patients who have an acute situation or a chronic illness. For most people, significant health issues are not something they have to confront. But for those who do, it’s a hard journey and it requires WORD WAS UNINTELLIGLBE support. And that, I think, is what nurses do.

Power Strategies: Knowledge, Leadership, Unity
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