Lifelong Learning: The Evolution of Nursing Education

Well, we would get up in the morning, and we would shower and get

dressed, and then go over to the dining room, have our breakfast.

You forgot. You forgot roll call.

[Coughing].

Yeah. I'm sorry. Well, we had--we could--yeah. But we could eat our

breakfast before roll call. Excuse me. No. We had roll call

before we went into breakfast. Oh, did you?

And then you had to pull up your uniform to be sure you had on a guard belt.

You couldn't wear a garish.

[Laughing].

[Music].

If you want to be a professional nurse, it is necessary to choose a good

school of nursing because only in a good nursing school can you get the

preparation on which your future as a nurse must depend.

In those days, we didn't learn anything about the male anatomy at all.

And at the GU either--we didn't know anything about it because we

weren't allowed to go near the male, you know.

So we had orderlies in those days that, if the male needed a bedpan or

whatever, then, you know, they took care of that, and we didn't.

We weren't allowed to.

But then during the war, when things--which I was hearing

during the war--became very scarce, you know,

they had no orderlies on the wards, and they didn't have orderlies.

And so we had to sneak around.

We had one instructor there--she called you.

If you were getting a bedpan from a man, she'd scream at you.

She'd stand at the end of the hall and call your name.

[Music].

The educational system in nursing is a little bit different, as it

evolved, than some other professions, because the focus was on learning

at the shoulder of other nurses with some educational foundation,

a little bit of science, and a little bit of support for

all the things that you were doing.

But it was kind of learning on the job with the support of an instructor and

some of the staff. So it was upside down in the sense

that usually, if you're wanting to take on some kind of a professional role,

you have a good solid scientific foundation for that.

And some of the changes, I think, that I see are the movement to more

education for nurses. People walk up a career ladder.

If they can't, you know, go to college right away, they have

opportunities to get into the discipline, and they walk up a career ladder.

So I value that kind of thing too. But the

career ladders have to be built stronger so that more people can move up

that ladder and have the advantage of the skills

that, coming out of a baccalaureate program, you know, people have to apply to their practice.

There's been some wonderful research about the impact of

educational preparation of nurses and the outcomes that patients have,

and it provides evidence for the value of nursing practice also, because the

skill sets are different. You have a different foundation on which to make

your critical judgments about patients.

And I think that's why the research is indicating that the outcomes are

better--because you have that foundation

in biochemistry and whatever else that

helps you to make good decisions for patients.

There's so much more now--research and support for

evidence-based interventions--that that's,

I think, a really major, dramatic change in how education is formulated.

[Music].

When nurses graduate, they have to know that it's lifelong learning ahead

of them, and that's got to be a constant.

They no longer can come out of school and say, "I'm set for a

career, and I'm going to go to work, and that's the way it's going to be."

Clearly, that has not been the case for many years.

But that is a real new reality, I think, that people have to experience when

they come out of school. Nurses now hang IV medications in the units, in

the intensive care units. They may have five, ten lines going with different medications going.

A few years ago, that would not have been done by nurses. Definitely,

physicians would have done that, and they

probably would not have done that many

meds in that route. They would not have given IVs as much as they do now.

That is so sophisticated. The interaction of medications is really profound.

And that goes along with other technologies as well. You just see

that all over the place. Not only in intensive care--you see it on the regular

floors. Wound care by advanced

practice nurses--they, many times, know the

technology that will work much better

than the physicians. And it's a matter of

educating the physicians as to which product will heal that wound quicker.

The care has changed. It's a much higher-tech care than it was.

I think new nurses have to know when to balance that.

They have to know how to balance the science and the caring part of their

profession. When I was with my granddaughter, Tanya--she's in nursing--

and one of her things was that I looked at some of her curriculum,

and it said, when you walk into a room--and this is what we were taught,

that hasn't changed--you assess the room.

You look at the room, the patient, how the patient looks and what she's

doing, how you know how the patient's feeling.

Remember, we've always taught that. You walk in

and look at everything, and then you know

whether the patient's progressing or whether they're deteriorating.

And that's still the same. That's one thing that hasn't changed.

But most of you--you know--everything is in for our new, which is

the way it should be. You know,

nursing should progress just like any other system.

[Music].