My second
semester at Duke brought to me many things.
I didn’t really realize how much happened and their impact until many
years later. We still were not even
close to doing nursing. We continued to
watch the upperclassmen come and go with their starched uniforms, caps, and
capes with a feeling of wonder and respect.
I felt that the day would never come when we could wear the uniform.We
were being oriented to our profession by THELMA INGLES
who taught us HISTORY OF
NURSING. She more than any other person
gave to this class of 1957 a set of philosophies and ideas that carried many of
us through over half a century of nursing.
She wrote this in the Tar Heel Nurse,
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| THELMA INGLES Nursing History 1954 |
“ A new kind of nurse
is being born, and we who are older in the profession must nourish her
development carefully and thoughtfully … The nurse will be a true colleague of
the physician – she will play a much more vital role in the orientation of
patients to care, evaluation of nurse must learn to work more harmoniously with
the physician; an essential function of the nurse is to promote harmonious
cooperation among all members of the medical team … We must also change some of
our methods of education. There should be more programs in nursing offered
at the master’s level, and programs in nursing should be started at the
doctoral level … Many nurses with advanced education too often have ceased to
the nurses and have become, rather, psychologists, sociologists, educators …
The fundamental objective of advanced education must be to prepare nurses to
become expert practionioneers of nursing … I believe too much research is being
carried on for the sake of research – it is time we do more research for the
sake of the patient … I believe more nurses must learn how to carry on research
… We must have the courage to face honestly our weaknesses as well as our
strengths, to investigate areas of dissatisfaction as well as satisfaction, to
look at ourselves as we are, and to decide what we want to become … And we must
examine our many functions carefully and have the courage to relinquish those
which might better be carried by other personnel.
I spent football Saturdays being picked up,
taken to Chapel Hill, dropped downtown on Franklin Street, having brunch at
Danzingers with Viennese coffee, walking across the campus to the football stadium
and watching the game. I would wait in
his beautiful car for him until he finished the chores of the day and returned
to me. I studied, read, and knitted a
drawer full of argyle socks for him while I waited. Our relationship was filled with waiting --waiting
for him to get done and return to me. We
would go to someplace to eat, to a movie and then park behind Hanes House, or Keenan
Woods to share our dreams, our kisses and our lives. I loved the Ivy Room in Durham
where we would
eat fried chicken covered with honey. Basketball
season was pretty much the same except I would wait outside the Gym for the
Basketball game to be over and return to Durham for a snack at THE REBEL or Blue Light drive
in.
Since our minds were fresh and searching,
these concepts became ours. We knew and we believed we were a new kind of nurse. We were colleagues of doctors. We were not afraid. We were not subservient. She taught us
that doctors did not know more, it is just what each of us knew was different.
This is perhaps one of my most deeply
held beliefs. Even though we were
required to pass ORGANIC CHEMISTRY in the same classroom with medical students
and with the same exams, we took ANATOMY from DR. MARKEE side by side with
medical students, and our PHYSIOLOGY class was the same as students of medicine
somehow the belief of some was that our minds were not as good. Not so for this
class at Duke.
From this time at Duke came many things. There
was many historic events forged here.
The first clinical masters program began in my years at Duke. Not the least,however, was the seeds of fragmentation
of patient care. Nursing came to the
table as the less powerful partner as DR.EUGENE STEAD, after trying to bring
medicine and nursing together along with THELMA INGLES, began his quest for the
Physician’s Assistant and NURSING began its quest for independent nursing
practice. These years in the fifties
were the beginning of what we see today in the form of Nurse Practitioners,
Physician Assistants, and all the sub specialties that make communication so
difficult when it reflects on the care of each patient. In these years the simplicity of care was
clear. There were DOCTORS, NURSES, PRACTICAL
NURSES, NURSING ASSISTANTS, LABORATORIANS, DIETITIANS, PHYSICAL AND
OCCUPATIONAL THERAPISTS, SOCIAL WORKERS, HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATORS, AND THAT WAS
PRETTY MUCH IT. Of course there were a few people in business offices, janitorial
services (but not too many). Doctors and
Nurses were in most of the administrative jobs carrying their clinical
knowledge and experience into the delivery system. There was much short-sightedness
as we look back. We complicated things
so much that now our health care system is in chaos. More later……
THELMA INGLES taught us “the care of patients was more important than
the growth and prestige of the profession we belong to.” We all took this with us for our
lifetime being a DUKE NURSE.
As I learned the seriousness of my profession, my life was
taking a turn that could not be expected by me, but was probably very predictable. On one April day in 1954, my friend, PAT
LARUE, asked if I would go on a blind date with her and her high school
sweetheart who was at UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA. I decided to go with her. That night on APRIL 9, 1954 I met HERMAN BUNCH. I fell deeply in love. He was from Clinton, NC and was a junior at
UNC. He was busy with the athletic teams
there while finishing his degree. He
lived in Winston dorm,
just across the street from the gym and athletic facilities with Steve Marcinko his roommate. He was tall, blond curly hair, and very
handsome. In just a month he asked me to
wear his pin. Being pinned was one of
the things that each of us dreamed about.
I never dreamed I would be the second girl in my class to wear a
fraternity pin.
I never dated anyone
else until our relationship ended five years later.
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| Winston |
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I was so sad when summer arrived. I had to return to Greensboro and to work,
Herman to Clinton and work, and three whole months not seeing him and not being
at Duke. I left wearing his pin. I waited for letters every single day. He began a game for us. He took Baptist collection envelopes from
church, on one side he would have a riddle, and on the other side the answer. (The
offering envelopes, it occurs to me, are long gone. In those days, we would put
our Sunday offering in one side, and in the other side the money for
missions. There was a perforation
between the two sides so that when you sealed the envelope, you had two
separate sides.) I would open one side,
find the riddle, then open the other side to see if I was right. I loved getting his letters. It seems silly today that we did not see each other, that the drive was just too long...
This was perhaps the most important semester in a formative
way. I was learning in a broad
educational sense, I was in love for the first time, my base for understanding
nursing and patient care was being formulated and I was getting ready for the
harder days ahead with its highs and lows.
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