Toward a History of Health Care: Repositioning the Histories of Nursing and Medicine.

This positioning paper presents a new paradigm for the history of both nursing and medicine that will involve studying these actors and their practices in relation to each other rather than, as we have done, in isolation. This is not to say that both disciplines have had the same orientation and the same ambitions. Nursing, as I argue, has had a more constant focus and impact on its particular communities; medicine, by contrast, more successfully articulated a commitment to depersonalized knowledge and expertise that seemed to transcend individual and community experiences. Yet these may be the two sides of the same proverbial coin. Nursing and medicine needed each other to make their particular claims to authority and expertise and, in the end, to achieve the success of their "scientific agenda."

Ethel Parsons' biographical characteristics: leadership in American and Brazilian nursing.

OBJECTIVE: to reconstruct Ethel Parsons' biographical aspects in the centenary of the technical cooperation mission for nursing development in Brazil. METHOD: biographical research, carried out using the historical sources analysis method, which consists of reading and interpreting the collected documents. RESULTS: from a renowned family, Ethel Parsons was head of public health services and worked for the American Red Cross before being appointed to coordinate the Rockefeller Foundation mission in Brazil, where she inaugurated the Anglo-American model of nursing. For ten years, Parsons dedicated herself to leading such a mission, which resulted in implementation and dissemination, by decree, of the Anglo-American model of nursing. In 1931, she returned to her country, where she died in 1953. CONCLUSION: Ethel Parsons stood out in the 20th century as a woman and a nurse, leading public health care services in the USA and Brazil. Her biography demonstrates an ideal of professionalization and science to be conquered by nursing in the care and educational scenario, which influenced the design of a collective identity for Brazilian nursing.

Reforming nursing registration: Lessons from pandemics.

A nimble and flexible regulatory response regarding the nursing workforce is essential to a fully integrated public health approach to national crises and pandemics. The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn many comparisons to the 1918 Flu Pandemic. Some of them are well-reasoned and grounded in evidence. Other are not. This study provides a historically contextualized analysis of how the 1918 flu pandemic helped shape Pennsylvania nursing's current regulatory apparatus. We conclude that the state-based solutions that nursing registration represents are inadequate to deal with pandemics and crises with national, if not global, reach. We need to move immediately toward the national COMPACT system, while mindful of how regulatory processes and procedures can reinforce structural inequities.

The Perspectives of Volunteer Counselors of Korean Immigrant Women Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence.

This study investigates what needs to be considered in our current health services to appropriately respond to abused Korean immigrant women. Using a community-based participatory approach, this qualitative interpretive description analyzed counseling documents and semi-structured interviews. Data analyses suggested that intimate partner violence (IPV) screening for ethnic minority women in health care settings can be improved by informing patients about the role of health care providers in addressing IPV, establishing rapport before IPV screening, assuring confidentiality is maintained, respecting Korean immigrant women's unique perspectives and response toward IPV, providing translation services, and collaborating with ethnic minority women's community organizations.

Addressing sexual health behaviour during emerging adulthood: a critical review of the literature.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: In this critical literature review, we examine evidence-based interventions that target sexual behaviours of 18- to 25-year-old emerging adult women. BACKGROUND: Nurses and clinicians implement theory-driven research programmes for young women with increased risk of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections. Strategies to decrease transmission of HIV and sexually transmitted infections are rigorously evaluated and promoted by public health agencies such as the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While many interventions demonstrate episodic reductions in sexual risk behaviours and infection transmission, there is little evidence they build sustainable skills and behaviours. Programmes may not attend to contextual and affective influences on sexual behaviour change. DESIGN: Discursive paper. METHODS: We conducted a conceptually based literature review and critical analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's best-evidence and good-evidence HIV behavioural interventions. In this review, we examined three contextual and affective influences on the sexual health of emerging adult women: (1) developmental age, (2) reproduction and pregnancy desires and (3) sexual security or emotional responses accompanying relationship experiences. RESULTS: Our analyses revealed intervention programmes paid little attention to ways age, desires for pregnancy or emotional factors influence sexual decisions. Some programmes included 18- to 25-year-olds, but they made up small percentages of the sample and did not attend to unique emerging adult experiences. Second, primary focus on infection prevention overshadowed participant desires for pregnancy. Third, few interventions considered emotional mechanisms derived from relationship experiences involved in sexual decision-making. CONCLUSIONS: Growing evidence demonstrates sexual health interventions may be more effective if augmented to attend to contextual and affective influences on relationship risks and decision-making. Modifying currently accepted strategies may enhance sustainability of sexual health-promoting behaviours. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: This study provides nurses and public health educators with recommendations for broadening the content of sexual health promotion intervention programming.