Visions Realized and Dreams Dashed: Helen Penhale and the First Basic Integrated Baccalaureate Program in Nursing in the West, at the University of Alberta 1952-1956

Abstract

The first basic degree program in nursing in Canada was established at the University of British Columbia in 1919. This program and those that followed elsewhere were of the non-integrated form, wherein a diploma program offered by a hospital was supplemented by university courses in the arts, humanities, and sciences. In 1942 an innovative basic baccalaureate program in nursing was established at the University of Toronto; courses in nursing, given by the university, were offered in conjunction with university courses in other subjects. Only two other attempts were made to set up integrated programs in Canada prior to release of the Report of the Royal Commission on Health Services of 1964: McMaster University established a program in 1946, and, in an attempt that was ultimately unsuccessful, a program was established at the University of Alberta in 1952. The purpose of this study was to examine the conditions surrounding the initiation and termination of a basic degree program in the 1950s at the University of Alberta, in order to understand the key issues in the movement to establish basic university degree programs for nurses, and the gender discrimination relative to nurses and nursing students that has prevailed in health and education. Although the conflict at the University of Alberta was a very difficult one for the nurses involved, and although the Director who had the temerity to establish the program relinquished her position when the program was summarily terminated, this episode in Canadian nursing history provides insight into the climate in which baccalaureate nursing education existed and into some of the issues relative to its development. The history of nursing education in Canada has been characterized by slow progress, frustrating struggles, heartbreaking compromises, and, occasionally, well-deserved victories. Often the successes are more readily recalled than the hardships and setbacks that were an integral part of achieving important goals. Failure to analyze setbacks results in an obscuring of the effort required to improve standards of education and establish nursing as an academic discipline. The purpose of this paper is to explore a chapter in the history of nursing education at the University of Alberta that illustrates how the efforts of a strong nursing leader to establish an integrated degree program were stifled by powerful opponents. Since the context of nursing education at the University of Alberta is representative of that in Canadian universities in the 1940s and 1950s, an understanding of the conflict is useful in recognizing issues involved in establishing basic integrated degree programs in nursing.1