Digital Nurses: Digitizing the Quintessential Women’s Profession
Speaker Bio
Jean C. Whelan, PhD, RN, is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania and Assistant Director of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing. Her research expertise focuses on the history of the nursing profession, workforce issues shaping nursing's development and policy implications involved in maintaining adequate nurse services. She is Project Director of two innovative digital projects on nursing. Her recent publications focus on demographic characteristics of American nurses and their distribution to the public. Dr. Whelan is currently President of the American Association for the History of Nursing.
Abstract
The gendered nature of nursing makes the profession the prototypical female occupation; an occupation of interest to women's history on multiple levels. Numerous primary resources exist from which to study this profession. To date, few primary documents pertaining to nursing have been digitized. This paper describes two digitization projects carried out by the University of Pennsylvania's Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing which focus on nursing.
The first project digitized the photo collection of the Alumnae Association of the Philadelphia General Hospital (PGH) School of Nursing, one of the largest hospital based nursing schools of nursing operating in the United States in the last century. The second project is a NIH funded project which created the Nursing, History and Health Care website, a site which analyzes and places in historical context critical political and social issues influencing the provision of nursing care.
This paper will discuss digitization challenges and successes using nurses and the nursing profession as a focus of analysis. The central theme presents nursing as offering a unique opportunity to expand understanding of how this inherently interesting profession developed and challenges previous analyses which placed nurses at the periphery of hospital care activities.
Digital Nurses: Digitizing the Quintessential Women’s Profession
The gendered nature of nursing makes the profession the prototypical female occupation; an occupation of interest to women's history on multiple levels. Numerous primary resources exist from which to study this profession. To date, few primary documents pertaining to nursing have been digitized. This paper describes two digitization projects carried out by the University of Pennsylvania's Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing which focus on nursing.
The first project digitized the photo collection of the Alumnae Association of the Philadelphia General Hospital (PGH) School of Nursing, one of the largest hospital based nursing schools of nursing operating in the United States in the last century. The second project is a NIH funded project which created the Nursing, History and Health Care website, a site which analyzes and places in historical context critical political and social issues influencing the provision of nursing care.
This paper will discuss digitization challenges and successes using nurses and the nursing profession as a focus of analysis. The central theme presents nursing as offering a unique opportunity to expand understanding of how this inherently interesting profession developed and challenges previous analyses which placed nurses at the periphery of hospital care activities.