Brother Sebastian Brogan

July 19, 2002

The Alexian Brothers are a Catholic order with a long association with nursing and the care of the sick. Although they meant well, their nursing skills did not keep up with the changing role of nurses in the first part of the 20th century. Brother Sebastian Brogan (1883-?) entered the Alexian Brothers Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago in 1920. He later described the school of nursing as being "one in name only."

Almost all of what the students learned about nursing was through their duties in the hospital. Brogan's criticism could have been applied to a large number of nursing schools at that time. Nursing students in the hospitals not only had raised standards of care, but also made money for the hospitals, leading to a rapid increase in the number of schools, which totaled well more than 1,000 by 1920. Hospitals with as few as 25 beds established nursing schools, and many training schools sent their students out as private duty nurses to make money for the hospital. Many of the more serious abuses were lessened by the establishment of nursing registration and the accreditation of nursing schools, which was just beginning to have a serious effect in the 1920s.

Brogan, appointed director of the Alexian Brothers school in 1924, was determined that the school would at least meet state standards. The first step was to have the graduates certified as registered nurses and, in 1925, he persuaded the State Board of Nurses in Illinois to let the graduates of the school sit for an examination. Brogan took the state boards in May 1925, passed and became an RN.

Because he strongly believed that nursing needed more men (and almost all the hospital schools refused to accept male students), he encouraged both laity as well as clergy to train as nurses in the Alexian Brothers school. Between 1925 and 1927, about 19 brothers followed his example to become RNs. Many of the lay students, however, complained about Brogan's high expectations and left to find easier schools. Still, the number of graduates slowly grew.

Discouraged by the criticism, in 1929, Brogan resigned as director. Still the visionary, he advised the nursing school to affiliate with Loyola University to raise the quality of the order's nurses (when only a handful of schools had a university affiliation). Brogan was affiliated with the Alexian Brothers in St. Louis for a short time, but in 1930 he left the order, and the Alexian Brothers have no record of what happened to him.

Brogan is important for emphasizing in his own way that men do have an important role to play in American nursing.