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chapter 15 | Nursing Yesterday and Today 247 CikguOnline
New technologies had entered the field of health care,
requiring nurses to have a stronger background in the Expanding the Definition of Nursing
sciences and be able to use these technologies at the Virginia Henderson’s most important publication,
bedside. Principles and Practice of Nursing, is considered the
In 1952 a project aimed at developing nursing 20th century’s equivalent to Nightingale’s Notes on
education programs in junior and community col- Nursing. Nightingale had emphasized nature as the
leges was launched. Montag, now an assistant pro- primary healer but, with the advent of antibiotic
fessor of nursing at Columbia Teacher’s College,was therapy and other technological advances, this
appointed the project coordinator.Montag proposed approach needed expansion (Henderson, 1955).
two levels of nursing, creating what she described as In her textbook revision in 1955, Henderson
the technical nurse. This nurse would provide direct, first offered her description of nursing: “I say that
safe nursing care under the supervision of the pro- the nurse does for others what they would do for
fessional nurse in an acute care setting (Haase, themselves if they had the strength,the will and the
1990). The curriculum included general education knowledge. But I go on to say that the nurse makes
courses to prepare the nurse for social and personal the patient independent of him or her as soon as
competency as well as skill competency.Today, asso- possible.” Henderson wrote three editions of this
ciate degree programs provide more graduate nurses textbook. Unlike other nursing textbooks, this one
than any other nursing programs. emphasized the importance of nursing research.
Associate degree nursing education has had a Nurse educators continued using the book
profound effect on nursing education. Montag’s throughout the remainder of the century.
achievement also increased the shift of nursing edu- Henderson believed that nursing complemented
cation from the hospital to institutions of higher the patient by giving him or her what was needed in
learning. “will or strength” to perform the daily activities and
carry out the physician’s treatment. She believed
Virginia Henderson strongly in “getting inside the skin”of her patients as
a way of knowing what he or she needed.As she said,
Background “The nurse is temporarily the consciousness of the
Virginia Henderson was born November 30, unconscious,the love of life for the suicidal,the leg of
1897, in Kansas City, Missouri. She attended the the amputee, the eyes of the newly blind, a means of
U.S. Army School of Nursing during World War locomotion for the infant and the knowledge and
I. Her mentor was Annie Goodrich, head of the confidence of the new mother”(Henderson, 1955).
Army School. Goodrich later became the first Her beginnings were in public health, and this
dean of the Yale School of Nursing. After influenced her definition of nursing. Because of
the war, Henderson continued her nursing career this background, Henderson was a proponent of
in public health in New York City and publicly financed, universally accessible health-care
Washington, D.C. services. She understood that nurses maintained
Henderson decided to enter nursing education roots in the communities where they lived, and she
and took her first faculty position at the Norfolk believed that nursing belonged in the forefront of
Virginia Protestant Hospital School of Nursing. In health-care reform. She also believed that nurses
1929 she returned to New York and enrolled in should take every opportunity to advance the pro-
Columbia Teacher’s College to further her nursing fession by becoming leaders in developing plans for
education. Here she earned her bachelor’s and mas- implementing accessible health care. She founded
ter’s degrees and then joined the faculty of the Interagency Council on Information Resources
Columbia Teacher’s College. for Nursing. She was a consultant to the National
In 1953 she joined the faculty of the Yale School Library of Medicine and the American Journal of
of Nursing in New Haven,Connecticut,as a research Nursing Company. Henderson received many
associate and spent the last four decades of her life awards for her work and efforts to increase the sta-
there. She began a 19-year project to review nursing tus of the nursing profession.The Sigma Theta Tau
literature and published the four-volume Nursing International Nurses Honor Society named its
Studies Index, which indexed the English-language library in honor of her outstanding contributions to
nursing literature from 1900 through 1960. nursing.