ABSTRACT
World War II was a watershed for American nursing: it marked the massive government entry into the nursing field, as reported in the last chapter; it coincided with the shift from private duty nursing to hospital nursing; and it encouraged a change in the status of nurses. Nurses had not only achieved officer rank, but because they were often the only women on or near the battlefield, they became heroines for women everywhere. The Goldmark Report, for example, had suggested—but not stressed—that nursing be more stratified; the Brown Report urged that nurses be divided into professional and practical levels. Practical nurses, according to the report, could be trained in vocational programs, while the professionals should be educated in colleges or universities or, at the very least, in hospital schools that maintained some affiliation with institutions of higher education.
