Why do Nurses need to study History

[Tweety]

I'm not talking Nursing History. I'm taking Western Civ. as a co-req in my RN to BSN program. We have a weekly hour discussion, where we're graded on showing up and participating, but not our answers.

One of the discussion questions this week is "Why is it important for the nursing professional to have a basic knowledge of history?"

I'm stumped on this. Other than the old standard of having a well-rounded education, I'm not sure why I need to have a knowledge of Mesopotamians and ancient Egyptians?

Any ideas? (Again this is not a graded question so I'm not asking anyone to do my homework, it's just a topic for discussion, and I'd like to participate.)

Thanks.

[Mommy TeleRN, RN]

Hey..now I wish I'd paid better attention in my History courses! :chuckle

[Race Mom, ASN, RN]

In high school, it didn't matter if I paid attention or not! My teacher was a pHD veteran. You would think he would teach us something! Our assignments consisted of...

writing down all the verbs in a chapter, or all the proper names.

Writing down what we saw on a slide show, each picture up for 30 secs. Anything counted (tree, shoe, building, cloud...)

At the end of the YEAR, our final was to add up every word in our notes (if that is what you could call them). This total would be considered extra credit, since we were supposed to do the rediculous work and keep it all year. I ended up with over 11,000 extra credit points! Easiest A ever imaginable, but learned squat!

Most exciting thing in the class was a fight that broke out and this little old man (always had white stuff in the corners of his mouth, yuckie) jumped in there to break it up!

Needless to say, I didn't do very well in my next history class, junior year. I feel like a complete idiot when it comes to history...probably because I AM! Up until my Political Science course this summer (which I LOVED and learned tons!) I didn't know who fought in the civil war!:imbar

Woogy

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

Wow Tweety - your homework just got done for you.

I agree with all the above - I really do believe in the liberal arts college experience.

steph

Woo Hoo! Thanks so much for everyone's intelligent and thoughtful answers, it sure helps to step outside of my box. Furhter input will be appreciated as well.

This is definately a course that isn't about memorizing dates and events, especially the live discussion, which ask questions such as this and here's a good one "based on your understanding of the term "civilization" and it's characteristics, what is the realtionship between the development of specialized workers, i.e. nurses, and the development of complex institutions i.e. hospitals. Explain". Ow, my brain hurts. :)

This is the last of my co-req courses, and probably it's not coincidence that this is followed by Community Health Nursing which is followed by Population Focused Health Promotion.

Thanks again.

[smk1, LPN]

i think of it from a sociologist view. You need to know and understand history of different cultures and how they evolved to understand the current cultures of today. Also from a standpoint of education, we want to have our professionals know world history to note themes that are recurring in world events. If no one knows the mitakes of the past, and can't recognize when things are shifting toward those mistakes today, then there will be no voice of reason.

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

HA! I took Western Civ before I even went into nursing. I don't envy you. It was a difficult class, I thought.

This is important because it gives you a knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the beginnings of our own civilization. It gives you a link as to how we have come to categorize illness and a person's place in their society. I think it is also respectful to hear what our ancestors went through to bring us to the situation we live in today. Many people in the civilizations before us gave their lives, died, to advance what was then a revolutionary idea that we now casually dismiss as something very simple that everybody knows. In studying this I think we are honoring their lives and memories. I think it's a pretty common idea that we would all like to leave this world having left something of ourselves behind. How can we poo-poo what others before us accomplished when we would like those coming after us to recognize our achievements? Just like we turn up our noses and sneer about the physicians who did blood letting, don't you think that a few hundred years into the future our descendants are going to sneer at how we barbarically cut people up in surgery to heal them? Wouldn't you want the chance to explain your position to them? Well, it can only be done by studying their history and putting ourselves in their shoes.

Of specific interest to nursing in looking at the cultures of these ancient civiliations, is how they dealt with illness and disability. It also includes what their diet was, where they build their homes and the advances they may have made to any existing technology. Some civilizations were nearly wiped out by disease. Just look at the history of leprosy and how people who were unfortunate enough to get it were treated by their societies. I had heard on TV about a mummy they CAT scanned and found had a abscessed tooth with widespread infection into the jaw and part of the skull mentioning that the person must have had a terribly painful death. Things that killed people 4000 years ago are considered easily treatable today. Anthropologists in England are researching how their society just a few hundred years ago dealt with people who had disabilities and illness and are finding mass graves near old settlements where they believe these people were isolated from the rest of society. Did you know that with the discovery of canning food and pasteurization that food poisoning was literally put to the end of the list of causes of death. Women before modern obstetrics died from all kinds of complications of childbirth. As a woman, I have to confess that the idea of dying with a breech child stuck at the lady partsl canal just makes me cringe.

[Brotherbob, BSN, RN]

Without knowledge of history we´re dangerous, doomed to repeat past mistakes.

[SchoolRN,BSN]

Maybe it's to have some idea of the infamous big picture, especially since BSN nurses have many opportunities to work in public health.

I'm not sure about those old Mesopotamians, but if you look back through the last couple of hundred years, you can see some trends. The health of a nation is heavily influenced by its economy, natural disasters, social trends, etc. I think of the Industrial Revolution and the way it amplified cramped, unsanitary living conditions and the rampant spread of disease. Oh, and the horrendous plight of poor children who started in mines and factories when they were only seven or eight years old. Lot's of nursing opportunities in that kind of society.

You can also see things like the campaign to cure yellow fever and malaria as a response to the death toll associated with digging the Panama Canal.

You can track the path of different diseases that came along with conquest and immigration.

How about the Great London Fire butting up against the plague or Florence Nightingale opening up the idea of nursing to middle and upper class women during the Crimean War or the creation of various health organizations in response to regional famines or epidemics? These are just a few of the things that come to mind.

Maybe at some point we'll do better at anticipating the world's health needs and we'll be able to do more than just react. History will have a lot to teach us in that regard.

I hope you have a great time in your class, Tweety.

What a great answer!

Exactly what I was thinking, only better...

Heather

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

Thanks so much guys. I could write a paper now. Woot!

[ZASHAGALKA, RN]

Look at the riots in France all this month.

If you go back a few hundred years, you run into the same catalysts: high unemployment, religious intolerance, un-engaged youth. It's a recipe for a French Revolution (compare and contrast 'the riotors are scum' with 'let them eat cake'.)

European Gov'ts have such a huge debt load of benefits to upcoming retirees in the midst of a baby bust as never seen before (the ave Euro nations have a birth rate far less than needed to support entitlements - sound familiar?) The solution: bring in immigrants to fill the void (sound familiar to our open Southern border debate?). Only, In Europe, the void is a potential future void that hasn't so far translated into jobs here and now. So, you have all these youths brought into a new country with the promise of a future that is still just that: somewhere in the future. Add to that fact that many of these immigrants are Muslims and therefore culturally significantly different enough not to buy into the dominant culture, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Too bad the leaders of France didn't pay more attn in Western Civ.

(In another thread, I pointed out J. Madison's take that the only true way to have a Republic w/ Democratic tendencies is to make us all a greater majority to ourselves: that we all buy into the concept that we are one community. Otherwise all power is vested into majority rules with all parties only interested in their own majorities/interests - sound familiar to current American politics? Or to quote B. Franklin, "The greatest thing I ever invented was Americans." (Meaning the Constitution unified us as one people)).

Or to paraphrase Ecclesiastes: Everything under the sun has been done again and again. We are not only preceding our forefathers into death, we are preceding them in the exact same thinking and conflicts that generated our history in the first place. Another quote: those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.

As far as Western Civ: modern nursing is a direct function of western civilization. Modern nursing arose out of the ashes of warfare and Renaissance thinking that was the direct result of the Dark Ages that was the direct result of the fall of Rome, that was the direct result of . . . etc. etc.

Block by block our history is built. And nursing is a function of that history. I just jumped on the French for not learning the lessons of history. But. If you truly want to educate nurses w/ the concept that we can be political power brokers on our own behalf, how can we be similarly ignorant of the history that might affect or at least shed light on our advocacy?

(Now I have llg wondering if I'm the same anti-theorist poster on this site. LOLOLOL. I am.)

~faith,

Timothy.

[Spidey's mom, ADN, BSN, RN]

Thanks so much guys. I could write a paper now. Woot!

Very interesting thread! Are you going to use allnurses in your footnotes?

Tim! Nice to see you back and that you survived DisneyWorld.

steph

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

Learning of other cultures would be my guess.

[ZASHAGALKA, RN]

I decided against this post. LOL.