IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jocnur/v26y2017i5-6p805-812.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Managing boundaries between professional and lay nursing following the influenza pandemic, 1918–1919: insights for professional resilience today?

Author

Listed:
  • Pamela J Wood

Abstract

Aims and objectives To examine lay–professional nursing boundaries, using challenges to the New Zealand nursing profession following the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic as the example. Background The influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 had an overwhelming international impact on communities and the nursing profession. After the pandemic, the expectation for communities to be able to nurse the sick reflects today's increasing reliance on families to care for people at home. It similarly raised questions about the profession's role and professional boundaries in relation to volunteer or lay nursing. In New Zealand, the postpandemic challenge to build community lay nursing capacity tested these boundaries. Design Historical research. Methods Analysis of historical primary sources of official reports, newspaper accounts, articles in New Zealand's professional nursing journal Kai Tiaki and the memoir of Hester Maclean, the country's chief nurse. Interpretation of findings in relation to secondary sources examining similar historical tensions between professional and lay nursing, and to the more recent notion of professional resilience. Results Maclean guarded nursing's professional boundaries by maintaining considerable control over community instruction in nursing and by strenuously resisting the suggestion that this should be done in hospitals where professional nurses trained. Conclusions This historical example shows how the nursing profession faced the perceived threat to its professional boundaries. It also shows how competing goals of building community lay nursing capacity and protecting professional boundaries can be effectively managed. Relevance to Clinical Practice In the context of a global nursing shortage, limited healthcare budgets and a consequently increasing reliance on households to provide care for family members, this historical research shows nurses today that similar issues have been faced and effectively managed in the past.

Suggested Citation

  • Pamela J Wood, 2017. "Managing boundaries between professional and lay nursing following the influenza pandemic, 1918–1919: insights for professional resilience today?," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(5-6), pages 805-812, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:26:y:2017:i:5-6:p:805-812
    DOI: 10.1111/jocn.13570
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.13570
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jocn.13570?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:26:y:2017:i:5-6:p:805-812. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2702 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.