What Got Us Here Won't Get Us There: Critical History in Radical Black Re-imaginations of Canadian Nursing Histories.

As a "foursome" of nursing history students and scholars, upcoming, junior, and seasoned, we presented a panel on new work and possibilities related to histories of Blackness and Black nurses in Canadian nursing history. Our presentation was the 2023 keynote Hannah Panel Presentation for the joint Canadian Society for the History of Medicine (CSHM-SCHM) and the Canadian Association for the History of Nursing (CAHN-ACHN) conference. Reflecting and expanding our perspectives, we share the relevance and significance of engaging with histories of Canadian Blackness and (in)visibility of Blackness in nursing history. This paper considers the overarching question of how does engaging with histories of Canadian Blackness serve as an anti-racist strategy when examining, analyzing and understanding the history of nursing and health care? A core tenant of this work aims at acknowledging how institutional relationships of power are reproduced within scholarship unless there is space for radical re-imaginations. The disruption to power is achieved by exploring the connections between nursing and history from the perspective of Black nurses' history or Black feminist thought. We also disrupt power by our form, in challenging expectations of scientific inquiry as the only format of valid knowledge production within the discipline. Possibilities of arts-based methodology as a site for democratization in nursing knowledge are evoked through the metaphoric language (water, fire, air and earth) interwoven within the text. We highlight how each of us engages with nursing history, further complicating previous narratives of our collective Canadian past. In publishing our thoughts on historical inquiry in a nursing journal, we hope to provoke more curiosity and interest in history within our discipline as a site for liberation!

Reflections on Black Nurses' Invisibility: Exploring the Contribution of Black Nurses to British Columbia (Canada), 1845-1910.

Black nurses are at the margins of the annals of history and there is a dearth of historical accounts of their work. Drawing on our historical research about Black nurses in British Columbia (Canada) between 1845 and 1910, we point to the complexity of Black women's lives and argue that Black nurses disrupted the conceptualization of Blackness and Black womanhood of the time. We demonstrate the vital contributions of Black nurses to the health of communities and add to existing scholarship that redefines the nursing narrative: one in which white nurses are not the start and end point of history.

Nurses, physicians and patients' knowledge and attitudes about nurse prescribing.

BACKGROUND: One of the roles that nurses have acquired in recent years is the role of prescribing. This study aimed to investigate the knowledge and attitudes of critical care nurses, physicians and patients about nurse prescribing. METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional study with the participation of 152 nurses, 53 physicians and 75 patients was carried out. Participants were selected by stratified random sampling from the critical care units of six hospitals in Tabriz, Iran. Demographics and participants' knowledge and attitudes about nurse prescribing questionnaires were used to collect data. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS-22 software. RESULTS: The mean scores of total knowledge about nurse prescribing in nurses, patients and physicians' were 15.41 ± 1.85,16.45 ± 2.31, 14.74 ± 1.7 respectively (from a range of 10 -20), and the mean score of knowledge by physicians was significantly higher than others (P = 0.000) and they had more knowledge about nurse prescribing. The mean scores of the attitudes towards nurse prescribing in nurses, physicians and patients were 40.62 ± 3.68, 37.98 ± 5.92 and 39.38 ± 4.39 respectively (from a range of 10 -50). However, the total mean score of attitudes among nurses was significantly higher than others (P = 0.000) and nurses had more positive attitudes toward prescribing. CONCLUSION: The results showed that the participants have a good understanding and attitudes toward nurse prescribing. Nurse prescribing as a new duty and authority can be considered in providing more effective care by specialist nurses. The results of this study can also be used in the future planning of health policy for nurses to have the right to prescribe and ultimately improve the quality of patient care.

Negotiating relationships of power in a maternal and child health centre: the experience of WHO nurse Margaret Campbell Jackson in Iran, 1954-1956.

From November 1954 to November 1956, Canadian nurse Margaret Campbell Jackson was employed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and was stationed in Tehran, Iran, where she participated in the establishment of a Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Centre. The objective of the project, known as Iran 10, was twofold: to set up a health service for mothers and children and to initiate a field training program for Iranian physicians, nurses, and other health care providers. Drawing on 180 letters Jackson wrote to her family in Canada from Iran, this article analyzes the MCH Centre as a contact zone and considers the relationships Jackson developed with staff affiliated with the project. The Centre became a space of cross-cultural encounters, where locally and foreign-trained Iranian staff and expatriates mingled and shared working relationships. I argue that authority was negotiated and contested through interactions and associations that were often unequal and framed by notions of progress, modernization, race, and health. Personality also played an important role.