The lost heroes of nursing Thompson , D. R. (2019). The lost heroes of nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 75(11), 2267-2269. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.14145 Published in: Journal of Advanced Nursing Document Version: Peer reviewed version Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal Publisher rights Copyright Humana Press. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected]. Download date:25. Sep. 2021 Editorial The lost heroes of nursing David R Thompson PhD RN FRCN FAAN FESC Professor of Nursing School of Nursing and Midwifery Queen’s University Belfast Belfast United Kingdom Correspondence: Professor David R Thompson, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Queen’s University Belfast, Medical Biology Centre, 97 Lisburn Road, Belfast BT9 7BL, United Kingdom E‐mail: [email protected] ORCiD: 0000‐0001‐8518‐6307 1 A new book covering the first 85 years of DNA and culminating with the discovery of the double helix by James Watson and Francis Crick recounts how this was only possible because of the pioneering work of many others, often unknown or forgotten (Williams, 2019). Watson and Crick won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 with Maurice Wilkins, but Rosalind Franklin, whose key contribution ‘Photograph 51’ enabled Crick and Watson to unravel the double helix structure of DNA, tragically died in 1958 before the Nobel Prize was awarded (it is not awarded posthumously). As noted by Wilkins’ son, the structure of the DNA double helix emerged from the twin strands of the conceptual model and experimental rigour (Wilkins, 2013). Upon reading the book I was struck by the subtitle – ‘Lost Heroes’ and two quotations: ‘We stand on each other’s shoulders’ and ‘A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost’ attributed respectively to Rosalind Frankin and Alfred North Whitehead. This made me reflect on modern nursing and its lost heroes. I have had a long‐standing interest in science and nursing, the former inspired largely by reading The Double Helix (Watson, 1970) and later the three original papers in Nature on the structure of DNA (Watson & Crick, 1953; Wilkins et al., 1953; Franklin & Gosling). I was fortunate to meet Watson in 1992 whilst attending a lecture he gave and Crick whilst visiting my university PhD supervisor in the mid‐1980s. On both occasions they were extremely gracious and I was impressed by their modesty and humility (characteristics for which I gather neither of them are particularly known) as well as passion and energy. Reading their biographies one is struck by their ability to get to the 2 heart of an issue, to provoke and debate ideas dispassionately and persevere in the face of repeated obstacles, setbacks and disappointments. Meeting them instilled in me the virtues of a concatenation of vision, drive, tenacity and perspicacity tempered with patience and resilience. I was also fortunate for over 20 years to have known as a dear friend the late Sir James Mirrlees, winner of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (informally called the Nobel Prize in Economics) in 1996, who offered to help me with an economic evaluation of cardiac rehabilitation. I, perhaps embarrassed and feeling unworthy, declined his kind offer realising that he had more important and pressing matters to attend, including, amongst others, advising the Prime Ministers of Australia and India and the Premier of China. The reason I mention these individuals is that each was considerate, open and receptive to new ideas, willing to engage in discourse with all and sundry and, above all, unassuming. I was struck by their excitement at pondering research ideas, formulating hypotheses or posing questions. As a nurse (since 1976) academic (since 1988), I have been fortunate to know and be inspired by luminaries such as Virginia Henderson, Jean McFarlane and Ada Sue Hinshaw and, especially in my field, Susan Gortner, Kathy Dracup, Erika Froelicher and Debra Moser. Again, all modest but visionary people, great thinkers unafraid to ask difficult questions and take risks. As I work primarily in the field of cardiovascular nursing and rehabilitation, I have also been privileged to meet and work with some 3 great medical scientists (and I use this term advisedly), including Bob Anderson, David de Bono, Iain Chalmers, Desmond Julian, George Pohl, Dave Sackett, John Swales and David Weatherall, all of whom had a profound impact on my thinking and practise and were unfailingly courteous and respectful with incredibly sharp minds. I invariably came way from meetings with each of them feeling inspired, enthused and emboldened. However, this has not been a universal experience and there have been instances where I have encountered nurse academics who impart varying degrees of a sense of self‐ importance, entitlement and even aggrandisement, often in inverse proportion to their actual contributions to the academy and the profession. I do believe it important to the history and development of nursing that we acknowledge the significant contributions made by our predecessors and contemporaries – to my mind true nursing heroes. A sense of selective amnesia seems to pervade our discipline where we either forget or are ignorant of those who exerted a paradigm shift in nursing and inculcated a spirit of real scholarly inquiry. Most nursing students nowadays are likely taught about Florence Nightingale, probably Mary Seacole and possibly Ethel Bedford‐Fenwick and their legacy, but I suspect comparatively little of those who followed them. Since my nursing career began in 1972 as a student in the UK I have witnessed or participated in a series of fads and fashions: nursing theories and models; the nursing process; nursing care plans; task, team and primary nursing; evidence‐based nursing; and successive government Chief Nursing Officers launching to great fanfare ‘new’ – but 4 often superficial and unevaluated – initiatives, few enduring and impactful. This rapid turnover of initiatives has hardly imbued the nursing profession with stability and confidence or nursing with science. In the 1970s nursing theorists such as Callista Roy, Dorothea Orem, Martha Rogers, Hildegard Peplau and Jean Watson attempted – with varying degrees of success ‐ to provide some sort of scientific basis to their work and a contribution to nursing. As an aside, and to illustrate the impact of such theories on nursing practice, I recall asking a university student nurse what she thought of nursing models, to which she replied “I think if nurses want to parade in a bikini then that’s up to them”. So, real impact. Virginia Henderson, an influential nurse, researcher, theorist and author made probably the greatest contribution to nursing since Nightingale, including her extant definition of the nature of nursing and her influential textbook Principles and Practice of Nursing (Smith, 1989). Her work endures today, primarily through her 14 components or activities of daily living. The University of Edinburgh established Europe’s first academic Department of Nursing Studies in 1956 (directed by Elsie Stevenson, who also was founding editor‐in‐ chief of the International Journal of Nursing Studies – a major organ for nursing research ‐ in 1963), appointed its first chair/professor (Margaret Scott‐Wright) and established the first Nursing Research Unit (directed by Lisbeth Hockey) in 1971. 5 In 1974 Jean McFarlane was appointed the first Professor of Nursing in England at the University of Manchester where she developed a degree course and established the country’s first academic Department of Nursing and Professorial Nursing Unit, both of which flourished and produced many influential nurses and initiatives. McFarlane (1974) had been instrumental in establishing the influential Study of Nursing Care project which had three main objectives: to develop techniques for measuring the quality of nursing care; to involve nurses fully in the study; and to develop a pattern for this type of preparation of nurses to take part in and to understand research procedures. This project had a significant impact on nursing care, workforce planning and research development and produced 12 individual studies, many well‐known even today, published as monographs by the Royal College of Nursing (Smith & Crookes, 2012). The development of the project was due to the support of the Ministry (now Department) of Health, primarily its Nursing Officer (Research) Marjorie Simpson, and the Royal College of Nursing. In 1977, a degree course in nursing studies launched at Chelsea College (now King’s College), London led to the rapid growth of the Department of Nursing Studies (headed by Jack Hayward) and the launch of a Nursing Education Research Unit (directed by Caroline Cox). Soon other universities established academic department of nursing studies, notably: the University of Surrey (its first professor, Chris Armstrong‐ Esther, succeeded by Rosemary Crow who established a Nursing Practice Research Unit); the University of Wales College of Medicine (now Cardiff University) with its first director and later professor Christine Chapman and its RCN Nursing Research Unit 6 (directed by Jill MacGuire); and the University of Hull with its Institute of Nursing Studies and its first director and later professor Margaret Clarke).