ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how certain prominent structural and ideologies features of American nursing have evolved from certain historical conditions pertaining to the occupation and the country at large. It discusses the structural profile of the occupation: its complex of structural features which seem both to characterize the occupation and to hang together in a complicated pattern. Yet nurses had to be prodded by interested laymen and governmental representatives into coopting practical nurses into their own occupational structure. Listening to the passionate discussions within single faculties and specialties, one may discern an ongoing dialogue, whose subject from the nurses’ view is nursing care but the sociologist’s view represents a continually evolving occupational ideology. The nursing profession has closely supervised the development of schools for practical nurses, and looks with disfavor upon an incipient movement among practical nurses to seek independent status. The early reformer nurses believed that nursing was a profession, and apparently were successful in convincing the public of this.
