January 2024 SHC Lecture to Feature Dominique Tobbell, PhD

Nurses represent the largest segment of the US health care workforce and spend significantly more time with patients than any other member of the health care team. This lecture probes their history to examine major changes that have taken place in American health care in the second half of the twentieth century. It examines the work of academic nurses to construct a science of nursing—distinct from that of the related biomedical or behavioral sciences—that would provide the basis of nursing practice. Facing broad changes in patient care driven by the introduction of new medical innovations, academic nurses worked both to develop science-based nursing practice and to secure their roles within the post-war research university. By their efforts, academic nurses transformed nursing’s labor into a valuable site of knowledge production and demonstrated how application of this knowledge was integral to improving patient outcomes and healthcare delivery. This lecture explores the knowledge claims, strategies, and politics involved as academic nurses negotiated their roles and nursing’s future, revealing how state-supported academic health centers have profoundly shaped nursing education and health care delivery.

Join us for the January 2024 Student History Club (SHC) Noon Lecture, featuring Dominique Tobbell, PhD, the Centennial Distinguished Professor of Nursing and director of the Eleanor Crowder Bjoring Center for Nursing History of Inquiry at the University of Virginia.

Dr. Tobbell’s research examines the complex political, economic, and social relationships that developed among academic institutions, governments, and the health care industry in the decades after World War II and assesses the implications of those relationships for the current health care system. Dr. Tobbell’s latest book, Dr. Nurse: Science, Politics, and the Transformation of American Nursing (University of Chicago Press, 2022), analyzes the knowledge claims, strategies, and politics involved in the work of American nurses as they negotiated new roles and nursing’s place within universities and academic health centers in the decades after World War II.

The lecture will take place Wednesday, January 17, 2024, at 12 PM EST on Zoom. This event is open to the public. Virtual seating is limited and registration is required by Tuesday, January 16, 2023, at 6 PM to reserve your seat and to receive login information.