Description

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An analysis of the efforts of American nurses to establish nursing as an academic discipline and nurses as valued researchers in the decades after World War II.

Nurses represent the largest segment of the U.S. health care workforce and spend significantly more time with patients than any other member of the health care team. Dr. Nurse probes their history to examine major changes that have taken place in American health care in the second half of the twentieth century. The book reveals how federal and state health and higher education policies shaped education within health professions after World War II.

Starting in the 1950s, academic nurses sought to construct a science of nursing—distinct from that of the related biomedical or behavioral sciences—that would provide the basis for nursing practice. Their efforts transformed nursing’s labor into a valuable site of knowledge production and proved how the application of their knowledge was integral to improving patient outcomes. Exploring the knowledge claims, strategies, and politics involved as academic nurses negotiated their roles and nursing’s future, Dr. Nurse highlights how state-supported health centers have profoundly shaped nursing education and health care delivery. 

About the Author

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Dominique A. Tobbell is the Centennial Distinguished Professor of Nursing and director of the Eleanor Crowder Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry at the University of Virginia. She is coeditor of Global Health and Pharmacology and the author of several books, including Pills, Power, and Policy: The Struggle for Drug Reform in Cold War America and its Consequences.

Praise For…

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“Tobbell has done a magnificent job of placing American nursing’s professionalizing struggle, that often pitted advanced education against actual nursing practice, within the political economy of American health care. The book is a mix of specific case studies with clear explanations of the options and limits that faced American nursing leaders trying to make the concept of a Dr. Nurse not a contradiction. . . . Those wishing to understand the mess of American health care delivery will find much wisdom here.”
— Social History of Medicine

“If you want to know how nursing education evolved to where it is today, this is the book to read. It charts the path from the earliest nursing education—in hospitals with diploma programs—to colleges and academic health centers. The author does a meticulous job of examining the changing nature of nursing education and its challenges and controversies. In addition to outlining the evolution of nursing education, she discusses the evolution of the medical industry, including that of health insurance. This is an important book for nurses who want to change health care policy—in order to make meaningful change, it is imperative to know how we got to where we are now so we can start unbundling past decisions.”
— American Journal of Nursing

“Dr. Nurse is an engrossing analysis of nursing’s development and its struggle to be taken seriously as an academic discipline and to construct a science of nursing to undergird practice. Tobbell fills a major gap in the intellectual history of modern nursing, health-care knowledge development, education, and practice. She also offers a nuanced study of the processes surrounding determinations of who owns what scientific knowledge domains and how such decisions are made and informed by gender, social class, race, politics, power, and history.”
— Isis

"With thousands of US nurses leaving their profession in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and others striking for safe nurse:patient ratios, Tobbell offers a timely study of the post-WWII nursing project at publicly funded US universities, known as Academic Health Centers (AHCs). . . Dr. Nurse is well organized, and includes extensive endnotes citing original sources and a useful index. It is essential reading for understanding the disparate forces that have shaped the education, quality, and sufficiency of the US health care labor force."
— Choice

“No other volume comes close to Dr. Nurse in describing and analyzing the journey of American nurses to establish nursing as an academic discipline and nurses as valued researchers in the decades after World War II. Tobbell’s book is a critical addition to the current scholarship and will be welcomed by nursing PhD programs and by students and scholars of women’s studies and education and policy history.”
— Julie A. Fairman, University of Pennsylvania

“Dr. Nurse is a very rewarding read. Using perspectives drawn from the sociology of the professions and feminist histories of science, Tobbell explores the ways nurse scientists are both undervalued and in high demand, then connects that paradox convincingly to nursing’s own difficulties confronting racial and class diversity among its practitioners. Her argument is cogent and illustrated by engaging case studies.”
— Nancy Tomes, Stony Brook University