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The history of district nursing in Australia explored in this paper reveals a continuity in the essential values held by district nurses for over a century. These nurses practised holistic, family-centred nursing from the very origins of district nursing service. The events surrounding the establishment of Community Health Centres in the 1970s challenged district nurses to reconsider their role, while at the same time reconfirming their essential ethos. These values that underpinned district nursing practice and challenges to these values are examined in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The present position paper provides an account of the life of Martha Entwistle, the earliest recorded convict nurse who worked within the Castle Hill Asylum. In our review of primary historical sources, Australia's first convict mental health nurse was found to be a resilient woman who endured several traumatic life experiences. Her nursing within Australia's first mental health asylum was highly valued by the superintendent of the service. She nursed in a harsh colonial environment, short of adequate resources, during an era of fast‐paced industrial and technological a change. Martha Entwistle's experiences provide a historical account of the role of the early convict mental health nurse. Her life story enables modern‐day nurses to reflect on the advances made in mental health nursing and contexts of care for nurses today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a plethora of routes to obtaining a doctorate in nursing and this arises due to international differences in the modes of study, preparation of the final submission and examination systems. The variety of pathways and outcomes leads to some confusion over the status and purpose of doctorates in nursing. In this discursive paper we review the historical development of the doctorate in nursing and describe the various routes to doctorate in Europe, Australia and the United States. There is much in common between the various routes with increasing evidence of formal elements across the countries studies and, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, evidence that the fitness for purpose of the doctorate in nursing is being examined and changes being introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding one's history is a powerful way to build a sense of belonging, identity and connection. Similarly, history learning can be a powerful component in the core curriculum for undergraduate nursing. History learning develops thinking skills transferable to and necessary in nursing practice. Additionally, awareness about the profession's struggles, achievements and enduring concerns is raised and belief that an individual or group can have influence is affirmed. Perseverance, commitment and seeing the big picture gives a nurse's career meaning and purpose. All of these factors can produce a transformed perspective in today's learners, who are often present-focused, isolated and disconnected from the past and the profession. This paper reports an evaluation of a second interactive learning experience held at the University of the Sunshine Coast to celebrate International Nurses Day 2010. In a previous paper, we shared our initial insights after the success of the first event, and now build upon those insights by examining the transformative learning provoked by the experience, from the points of view of students and staff., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This paper reports on a survey of Australian Schools of Nursing that took place over an 8months period between 2007 and 2008. This study was implemented to extend understanding of effective teaching of nursing history, an area not previously researched in Australia. A critical interpretive method enabled us to problematise the issue, to highlight what was said about the importance of history teaching as well as ad hoc practices and barriers. The study found that participants value history of nursing teaching, but the crowded curriculum is erasing history's place and potential. It revealed ideological tensions shaping and constraining history of nursing teaching. In Australia, the way nursing's history is taught varies and teaching content, strategies and resources utilised are not evenly available. Pedagogical innovations are not effectively disseminated. Our recommendations for Australian Schools of Nursing that have more general applicability are: (1) Nursing curriculum needs to be developed from a set of principles and standards that define the attributes of the professional nurse, not in response to interest groups and (2) History of nursing pedagogy should be systematically developed and disseminated through a national virtual centre, linked to international centres, to enhance teachers' understanding of the discipline area and to support their teaching practice., (Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Nursing's history is an important, yet overlooked component of the nursing curriculum. History learning offers an opportunity to develop nursing graduates as critical and constructive thinkers with a positive professional identity. An Australian national study of nursing academics conducted in 2008 found that even though participants valued history of nursing teaching, educators have difficulty finding a place for history in the crowded curriculum, due to an over-emphasis on technical skills. The study also found that history of nursing pedagogy is inconsistent and poorly developed, and teaching expertise is unevenly distributed and difficult to access. This paper is an attempt to advance nursing history pedagogy relevant to Australia, by promoting a transformative approach to curriculum design in history learning, considering issues of significance to Australian nursing, and creating exemplar activities.

In this paper we argue that nursing is consistently presented as a practice without a history, constantly reinventing itself within new professional and technical realms. This rupture with and repudiation of a past deemed to be pejorative, coupled with a rebirth in a "preferred present," raises recurrent problems in the construction of nursing's contemporary professional identity and search for social legitimacy. Furthermore, constituting new nursing knowledge and practice as discontinuous with the past produces a sense of historical dislocation of that nursing knowledge and practice that, in turn, reproduces the need for relocation through reinvention. This phenomenon, which we term the "rhetoric of rupture," in our view, arises from nursing's frustrated attempts to gain social status and legitimacy. Paradoxically, this constant reinvention in fact hampers nurses' attempts to gain that status and legitimacy.

Significant changes to the scope of practice for enrolled nurses have occurred in Australia over the past decade. These changes, which are largely a consequence of staff shortages and economic pressure, have resulted in increased role confusion and overlap between enrolled and registered nurses in Australia. This paper presents a brief history of the enrolled nurse in Australia followed by an overview of the current situation and emerging trends in the education and employment of these nurses. Definitions and approaches to scope of practice are described and emerging issues within Australia raised and discussed. A review of the literature found the number of enrolled nurses and the roles they perform have changed significantly in Australia following the introduction of the enhanced scope of practice. Further research is required to better define and delineate between the different nursing roles and to explore broader frameworks to analyze, describe and define these roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of restructuring, conducted under the auspices of new public sector management, on the delivery of hospital based nursing care. Alderfer's model of 'overbounded' and 'underbounded' systems is used to analyse the way in which the organisation and delivery of nursing care has changed. Nursing was traditionally organised in an overbounded system which nevertheless focussed clearly and primarily on the provision of excellence in patient care. Recent research and examples from case law illustrate how nursing has moved into an underbounded system, where lines of authority and accountability are crossed and blurred. This can lead to practices of 'responsible subversion' which leave nurses feeling dissatisfied, guilty and marginalised. New management models are required to address the multiple and competing authority relations and imprecise, incomplete and overlapping role definitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the results of a national study of approaches to teaching nursing's history in Australia. We argue that the neglect of history learning within undergraduate nursing and midwifery education is undermining the development in students of a strong professional nursing identity. The data in our study shows that instead of proud, informed professionals, we are at risk of producing a generation of professional orphans – unaware of who they are and where they've come from, unaware of reasons underlying cultural practices within the profession, lacking in vision for the future, insecure about their capacity to contribute to future directions, and not feeling part of something bigger and more enduring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finding the most appropriate way to assess knowledge is an enduring issue. In the past, nurses seeking state registration or professional qualification through nursing association membership were required to pass state final or association examinations. This historical research describes final examinations in surgical nursing in Australia and New Zealand, 1905–1930, when the examination process and standards were first being established. A comparison shows more similarity than difference between the two countries' examinations. Not surprisingly, the most common topic in this pre-antibiotic period was prevention of wound infection. Despite the generally high pass rate, analysis of published examiners' comments in New Zealand reveals concern about areas of nurses' knowledge and level of general education. Examiners were concerned to ensure an effective examination but also provided advice on how to pass it. The research contributes to a consideration of surgeons' expectations of nurses, and relations and knowledge boundaries between the two professions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Views of history often seem to be inextricably intertwined with assumptions about past and present political systems and the kind of pressure groups they generate. This fact is important when comparing the history of nursing across different time periods. This paper addresses the relevance of the historical comparative method for nurse historians as it applies to remote area nursing in Australia. The method is an under-utilized but legitimate and important methodological approach in health research, particularly when the research involves more than just content analysis of documents from the past. Specifically, when researching the history of nursing in Australia across different time periods, this method has much to contribute to our understanding of health-care practice and policy. Its contribution lies in allowing a student of nursing history to find the lessons from the past, which are many in health care. The historical comparative research method provides the way for comparisons of certain times and events as they relate to the scope of practice of nursing today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Mental health nursing education in Australia has undergone a significant transition in the last 50 years, influenced by national inquiries, national decisions, and international trends in nursing education. But mental health nursing education had also accumulated decades of history in each state, including sometimes unequal relations with general nursing. Complex inter- and intra-professional relationships at state level influenced this educational transition in each state, and Western Australia provides an example of this influence. Using a range of published and unpublished sources, including oral histories, this paper describes the revision of the mental health nursing curriculum in Western Australia from 1958, responses to the call for transition to the tertiary sector between 1976 and 1984, and the final transition of mental health nursing education to university level in Western Australia in 1994. Mental health nursing's educational standards improved only gradually in Western Australia from 1958 onwards, compared with professional advances in general nursing in the same period. Factors which may have held back these improvements include mental health nursing's professional conservatism, which was outpaced by general nursing's growing radicalization at the national level. A lack of professional confidence and cohesion left mental health nursing unable to respond effectively to rapid external changes in the 1960s and 1970s, and vulnerable to absorption and dominance by general nursing education programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The oral testimony of forty men entering nursing (1950-2000) and twenty men entering midwifery (1970-2000) in Australia is littered with descriptions of gender discrimination. Men identify many of the barriers they encountered entering a female dominated profession. The Nurses' Registration Act in the States of Victoria (1958) and Tasmania (1952) explicitly stated no male could be registered as a midwife and this paper focuses on the personal accounts of three men (1974-1976) to change this legal impediment. In twenty-first century Australia the percentage of male midwives, like many countries around the world, remains very small, and depending on the state or territory of Australia is between 1 to 2.7 percent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article features the life and service of Jane Hellicar and the origins of modern nursing in Queensland. Topics discussed include two linked events that established the datum for the modern avocation of nursing including the establishment of children's hospitals. Information is also presented on the early care of the sick and injured children in Queensland, nursing training and appointment in Brisbane, and contemporary perspectives on the status of nursing.