President's Message March 2021

I met Dr. Jean Whelan many years ago at one of the first AAHN conferences I attended.  I remember hearing to her speak about nursing at the end of the 1800s and explore the state of nursing education and working conditions of nurses employed in the home.  Her mastery of the subject and the way she was able to communicate her message with the audience is something I will always remember. I was not as familiar with this period of time in nursing history, yet I knew I was in the presence of a true scholar. I am now delighted to learn that her scholarship continues in the form of a new book, Nursing the Nation Building the Nurse Labor Force, published by Rutgers University Press.

The promotional material for Nursing the Nation suggests that the book is a historical analysis of the relationship between the development of nurse employment arrangements with patients and institutions and the appearance of nurse shortages from 1890-1950. Profound and lengthy labor shortages have been a recurrent theme in nursing and Jean’s work provides an analysis of the ways health care institutions and policy making organizations failed to address the needs of the nursing workforce at its inception, a message that will resonate today.  Paradoxically, while nurses lost control of their ability to advocate for themselves within the health care institution, they also made themselves indispensable to its operation.                                                                               
Jean was a long-time member of AAHN, was past president of AAHN in 2012 and 2014 and a recipient of the Mary M. Roberts Award in 2015.   She was also an adjunct associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania and received the Legacy Award from Penn Nursing Alumni in 2014.

I hope you are as excited about the publication of this new book by Dr. Jean Whelan as I am.  

If you are interested in additional information on how to order Nursing the Nation, please see this link at Rutgers University Press Rutgers University Press  or call  1 800 621 2736. There is also a list of chapters and special pricing for orders to the US, to Canada, the UK and the rest of the world available with this flier Nursing the Nation flier

Thanks to all who made this publication possible.

All the best,

Melissa