Realities and rhetoric: general hospital nursing in New Zealand 1945 to 1960

Abstract

Up until the 1980s most of the historical writing about nursing and nurses in this country has been told from the points of view of past nursing leaders. The realities of day-to-day nursing in New Zealand general hospitals were relatively unknown. This thesis examines the experience of general hospital nursing between 1945 and 1960. The recollections of thirty-four nurses who nursed during this period have provided the key sources from which the major themes of this study emerged. These themes, of dirty work, authoritarian control and discipline, and learning nursing are discussed within the context of an expanding hospital system and a shortage of nurses. The study demonstrates the vast differences between the recollections of nurses of the experience of nursing and the rather high-flown rhetoric of the nursing leadership. Changes to the amount of cleaning, the level of discipline and control, and ways in which learning nursing was organised were small and gradual and occurred in the late 1950s. Overall, though, nursing in general hospitals by 1960 was almost unchanged from the 1930s. An ethos of selfless service, opposition to unionism, and Christian altruism was still dominant amongst the nursing leadership. Nurses in training still worked a six day week, were expected to stay on duty until the work was done, and were supervised closely in on and off duty time.