National Nurses United

CE_Sept 10/5/10 2:57 PM Page 21 children in Kings Park, Long Island, New York. Throughout her life she was concerned with racial and gender equality. She strived for and encouraged the acceptance of blacks in nursing. Mahoney was a strong supporter of women's suffrage and in 1921, at age 76, she was one of the first women in Boston to register to vote after the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Adah B. Thoms (1870-1943) "Mrs. Thoms' leadership is significant not only for her own race but for those socially minded persons of every race who cherish high purposes and unselfish accomplishments that bring promise of better relationships between people." —Lillian Wald, 1929 Adah Belle Thoms was born and educated in Richmond, Virginia. She championed equal opportunity for African-American women, first as a teacher in Virginia and later during her professional nursing career. Lavinia Dock collaborated with Adah Thoms to help organize black nurses into national associations. She used the more powerful voice of these associations to push for needed social reforms. Through these organizations they crusaded to establish minimum professional standards for nursing practice to secure patient safety, pursue equal pay for male and female nurses, and support the nurses' rights to set their own salaries. As president of the Lincoln Hospital Alumnae Association, she hosted the organizational meeting of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in New York City. Thoms campaigned for the enrollment of black nurses by the American Red Cross during World War I and was influential in increasing the number of African-American nurses in public health nursing positions. Margaret Sanger (1879-1976) "Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression." —Margaret Sanger Margaret Sanger was a nurse most closely associated with public health education regarding birth control and women's reproductive rights. Sanger was an avid defender of free speech who was persecuted and arrested at least eight times for expressing her views in a time when speaking publicly in favor of birth control was illegal. She attributed the censorship of her message about sexuality and contraceptives by the civil and religious authorities as an effort by men to keep women in submission. Sanger worked among settlement houses on the Lower East Side of New York with poor women who were suffering due to frequent childbirth and illness or death from self-induced abortions. She began to speak out for the need of women to become knowledgeable about birth control, and she believed that the poor should have the same access to health information and care as the wealthy. Lavinia Dock praised Sanger in a 1921 American Journal of Nursing article "for teaching to poor working women what all well-to-do women may learn from reliable authority, if they wish it." Women's rights activist and fellow suffragist Sylvie Thygeson described the synergistic nature of their social advocacy roles: "We followed Margaret Sanger. We advocated and we circulated the birth control contrivance she had invented. We worked very strictly with her, of course, because she was organizing the movement that went all over the country. I mean we worked – we were working at the same time on both movements. We were working constantly for the suf- SEPTEMBER 2010 frage movement as well as the birth control movement. They were part of our lives. The Woman's Welfare League which was identified with suffrage couldn't be identified with the birth control movement because that was illegal. But the women who belonged to the Welfare League and were officers in it all supported the Birth Control League. So we were closely identified not as an organization, but the people were closely identified with the movement." The Birth Control League maintained that it is a woman's right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother. In her book, A Short History of Nursing, Lavinia Dock declared: "It may be that, in time, the nursing profession may take pride in knowing that the pioneer agitator on this subject in our own country was a trained nurse, Margaret Sanger." The Problem: Then and Now In her book A Short History of Nursing, nurse-historian and ardent suffragist, Lavinia L. Dock, recorded the following excerpts from an address given to a group of nursing students by fellow scholar, collaborator, and nurse educator, Adelaide Nutting: "Perhaps we may eventually come to realize that the hospitals in which we work are in a real sense battlefields where men and women and children are fighting for their lives. In their struggle and their dire need of help they have come to us, trusting us to throw our strength and skill in upon their side, to fight with them the unseen enemy. The hospital of the past was the outcome of humane and ennobling ideals of service to one's fellows, and in spite of all the vicissitudes of history which have made it now the engine of the church, the plaything of politics, or the path to fame of the ambitious, or have even abased it to clear commercial uses… We may have great and imposing buildings, the last word in hygienic and sanitary appliances, dazzling operation rooms and laboratories, but that stricken human being lying there has many needs that none of these can satisfy." Ironically many nurses still struggle in their practice settings with issues of voice, authority, and power. Nurses may feel conflicted between their obligation to act as advocates, in the exclusive interest of their patients, and the policies of their employers. Moreover, many nurses and other healthcare professionals have experienced feelings of frustration and burnout due to the restructuring, downsizing and elimination of many healthcare services, and the growing control and interference with access to care by the insurance industry. These changes have lead to inadequate staffing, outright elimination of nursing positions, extensive use of insufficiently trained and unlicensed healthcare technicians, mandatory overtime, cost-containment policies which result in a limited availability of medications and medical supplies, an increased level of patient acuity, early patient discharge, and other problems which have negatively impacted the quality of care and patient outcomes. The Challenge "The fact is that modern industrial society is creating a set of conditions which can only be met and properly handled by legally giving women the same place in public affairs which has been her traditional place at home." —Lavinia Lloyd Dock W W W. 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