Letter from the Editor (Spring 2009)
LESLEY WADE
'You need a greater degree of imagination'
So wrote Charlotte Seymour Yapp in 1915 in her early text on the skills of children's nursing. It would be easy to say that in 2009 we have far more restrictions on our practice, and that society and science have changed to such a degree that creative resourcefulness and nursing imagination is a luxury. Indeed it is neither explicit within university curricula nor job specifications. And yet if we fail to probe this specific aspect of nursing we also fail in obtaining a comprehensive historical analysis of nursing's art and science.
Examining Seymour Yapp's writing, what is striking is not only her technical skill and knowledge of the social context of poverty, but her conveyance of the emotional care required.
What really counts
Others historians examining the diaries of First World War nurses also recognise the emotional caring our forbearers used. The language is florid, but it would have to be in the absence of the many advantages interactive media give us today. Examination of textbooks alone, or secondary sources rather like our ubiquitous contemporary power point presentations, often fail to capture the realities of teaching and engaging in nursing care.
It could be debated that from policy to practice, nursing history - a history that accurately reflects all the aspects of nursing - is still very much needed: all that is required is a greater degree of imagination.
Recently I have been working on the relationship between community nursing and the early Women's Institute, and intriguingly they are in many ways institutional cousins. These "action women" supported active nursing throughout a turbulent interwar period. The forging of this concept, this historical imagination, therefore highlights our profession's diversity across rural, remote and urban communities - a timely reminder to celebrate 150 years of district nursing.