Patricia van Betten, on the history of nursing

By Bree LeMaire, MS, RN
March 8, 2004

How did you get into nursing?

When I graduated from high school, my guidance counselor (and I use the term loosely) asked me if I wanted to be a teacher or a nurse. I remembered this nurse who lived down the street and I’d watch her going to work in her white uniform, white stockings and shoes, carrying her cap and I could see myself doing that. I also read the Cherry Ames novels so I had an idealistic picture of what nursing was and that brought me into the profession.

How did your book evolve?

In the mid-’90s, there were a number of daily reading books. I though how nice it would be to have something like that for nurses and invited my longtime friend Melisa Moriarty to work with me. We had worked together in public health at the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department in Texas in the early ’60s.

Initially, we researched feasibility. Then we ran into Vern and Bonnie Bulloughs’ American Nursing: A Biographical Dictionary, which now runs into three volumes. Vern encouraged us to pursue our vision, saying we could use their research. Although we started in 1995, we worked more diligently around the turn of the century. During 2003, much of our time was spent gathering permission for every quote.

There are many nurses listed: Where did you find them all?

We started with the Bulloughs’ books, but then we found Thelma Schorr and Anne Zimmerman’s book Making Choices, Taking Chances: Nurse Leaders Tell Their Stories. After that, we discovered Gwendolyn Safier’s Contemporary American Leaders in Nursing: An Oral History.

Our greatest joy, though, was to read through old AJN’s and other sources to discover nurses we had not previously come across. The book would be incomplete without people like Edith Cavell, Kathy Batterman or Henri Dunant. Cavell was a British nurse convicted and executed as a spy by the Germans during World War I because she treated injured men regardless of nationality. Batterman was a premier flight nurse who was on duty and died in a helicopter crash. Dunant, co-winner of the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, did work that led to what became known as the International Committee of the Red Cross.

We spent one summer in Washington, D.C., and were able to work at the NIH library. There, we found a book called Rural Nursing by Angelina Bushy with information about Joanne Gladden, NP, a nurse who started a rural clinic in North Dakota. She had a powerful quote about homelessness and mattering to another person. These nurses were wonderful discoveries.

Immense help came from the Sigma Theta Tau Distinguished Writers Program. This program teams up nurses who want to publish with nurses who are published.

Who is the earliest nurse? The most recent?

The earliest was Hildegard of Bingem. She was a healer who had a broad range of accomplishments and was absolutely fascinating. She lived from 1098 to 1179 and was a musician, among other things. You can still get her CDs today.

The most recent was Aurora Hernandez, a young migrant worker who expressly went into nursing to help migrant families. She has such a poignant quote, we had to put it in.

One of my great disappointments is that we never were able to find her to have her see what we were saying about her. I don’t know where she is. I hope she will contact us if she sees this.

What did you learn from writing this book?

I learned a lot about research and the importance of keeping better notes, but beyond that I learned so much about nursing. We are powerful, versatile, innovative and essential. Whatever the issue, nurses’ central theme is what is best for the patient. This is the constant concern. Nursing history needs to be part of all nursing curricula, not necessarily a chronological history, but especially the history of the issues we are facing today. All of our current issues have been addressed by nursing in the past.

Anything you want to add?

I am so grateful to the Sigma Theta Tau Distinguished Writers Program. This is the part that made all the difference. I really wish I could show our young people the opportunities that are open to them through nursing.

I have to say that if I had to do it all again, without a blink, I’d choose nursing.