Welcome to this episode of Nursing EDge Unscripted Saga where we journey through the history of nursing education using stories that connect the past to the present and then our future as we reimagine our teaching, learning, and scholarship. It is often said that the past teaches us about the present to study history is to study change, This year Saga gives voice to nursing through the words of our early nurse leaders who organized a discipline and carved out systems to formalize the education of nurses throughout the United States. "In Their Own Words" illuminates the visionary work of NLN pathfinders who questioned traditional curriculum paradigms and, in the process, co-created standards for nursing education to build the discipline of nursing. Last month, we described accomplishments to reform nursing education during the first decade of organized nursing from 1893 to 1900, with the origin of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses, termed the Society. You might find it helpful to go back and listen to parts one and two of the Evolution of Nursing Curriculum in our earlier Saga series this year. Part three now will focus on the establishment of curriculum standards and nursing education's transformative move to higher education. And like parts one and two, we will tell the story through the words of nursing education's early leaders documented from the proceedings of NLN annual conventions from 1893 to 1952. These publications are part of the NLN Archives Collection currently housed at the Bates Center for the History of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania. By the turn of the 20th century, new nursing specialties were emerging and leaders of the Society daringly spoke out about the need to embrace a broader understanding of the nurse's role. As early as 1900, at the sixth annual meeting of the Society in New York, Lillian Wald introduced the idea that civic reform and community-based care were integral to the nursing role. This was revolutionary as nursing at the time was confined to private duty care or skill-based employment in hospitals. In 1920, at the 26th annual meeting of the National League of Nursing Education or NLNE, the new name for the Society, S. Lillian Clayton was more specific about the emerging role of the community health nurse as clinician, scientist, and educator: A second specialty which garnered thought and discussion at the annual meetings of the NLNE was the value of mental health training. There was a continuing debate about whether mental work, as the term was used, should be relegated solely to the state hospitals or if mental work belonged as part of the hospital-based nursing curriculum. In 1916, at the 22nd annual meeting Effie Taylor from Johns Hopkins University provided a keynote presentation that galvanized the superintendents to add mental work to the general curriculum. In
her words:
From 1912 to 1917, M. Adelaide Nutting led the education committee of the Society and the NLNE to develop and disseminate a national atandard curriculum to include not only skills training and general knowledge requirements, but to incorporate the specialty content of community and mental health nursing. The 1917 standard curriculum succeeded in regulating national curricula; it was a heroic effort by the NLNE to provide direction for balancing theory and practice. It would be revised in 1927. By 1937, the NLNE decided to publish curriculum guidelines rather than standards to encourage more flexibility for training schools. This was a turning point. The NLNE determined that it was not the role of the organization to establish a structured universal curriculum. Rather they would provide recommendations to offer schools the opportunity to innovate and experiment with content delivery and teaching strategies. Within a half a century, the Society, and now the National League of Nursing Education, had built a curriculum framework to bring consistency and rigor to training schools, a monumental task. This growth was remarkable and transformative and paved the way for the teachers in the training schools to understand the breadth and depth of suggested content more fully and to recognize the need to be informed by practice changes. In part four, we will explore further expansion of nursing curricula as the National League of Nursing Education endeavored to find a pathway to university education and blend training with science. And so the Saga continues, and may our Saga continue as we bring to a close this episode of Nursing Edge Unscripted Saga. Thank you for joining us