A social construction of the development of ICU nursing in Canada, 1960 to 2002.

Background: The early 1960s marked the opening of intensive care units (ICUs) in several hospitals across Canada. From the beginning, registered nurses constituted the largest body of health care providers in the ICU environment and they were the central provider of hands-on care to patients and families. From a historical perspective, however, a limited body of knowledge exists specific to the development of ICU nursing in Canada.

"Help Us, Serve England": First World War Military Nursing and National Identities.

Historians generally argue that the First World War was a defining experience from which Canadians emerged with a strong sense of national identity distinct from their British roots. There is little historical research on women's wartime experiences and even less on military nurses. This article explores the working relationships of Nursing Sister Emeline Robinson with British nurses, VAD volunteers, orderlies, and medical officers during her one and a half years with the Queen Alexandra Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve through her diary, which spans her enlistment, resignation, and re-enlistment with the Canadian Army Medical Corps.

Historical thinking and the shaping of nursing identity.

Nursing history was a core component of nurse training programs as early as 1907, when American Adelaide Nutting published her three-volume history. However, it had all but disappeared by the end of the 20th century, supplanted by other subjects. The University of Ottawa Nursing History Research Unit developed two online nursing history courses, in English and French, respectively, which proved popular and prompted substantial interest in the reintroduction of nursing history to our curriculum.

"Body work": nurses and the delegation of medical technology at the Ottawa Civic Hospital, 1947-1972.

The absence of ordinary women from histories of science and technology may be partially explained by what has been excluded as science, as well as who have been excluded as women of science. Although the delegation of medical technology to Ontario nurses increased rapidly during the mid-twentieth century, we know very little regarding how these ordinary women engaged in science and medical technology through the everyday practice of "body work." Gender structured the working relationships between predominantly-male physicians and predominantly-female nurses, shaping the process of delegation and generating significant changes in nurses' work as well as who provided bedside care.

Evidence to practice: pre-post-implementation study of a patient/provider resource for self-management with heart failure.

Background  Evidence-based recommendations for heart failure self-management are contained in quality clinical practice guidelines. To implement these in practice requires additional translation. Partners in Care for Congestive Heart Failure (PCCHF) is a set of resource materials developed to encourage heart failure patients and their families to assume greater responsibility and to participate in daily decision-making related to their illness experience by enhancing their self-assessment and self-management skills.

Emerging scholarship in nursing.

These are dynamic times for nursing history in Canada, as this special issue of the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History demonstrates. Twenty years ago, scholars sought to create one professional identity and one homogenous historical story while current historians of nursing understand that profession to be more diverse and more complex. Emerging scholarship situates itself increasingly within mainstream histories and the subfield of women's history.

Almonte's great train disaster: Shaping nurses' roles and the civilian use of blood transfusion.

Blood transfusion was initially a small-scale, labour-intensive therapy administered by physicians. Through the first decades of the 20th century, transfusion comprised a "last resort" measure used and tested primarily in the context of war. Media accounts of the Almonte train disaster on the night of 27 December 1942 linked survival to the newly established blood bank located 42 km east in Ottawa, Ontario.