Designer's Corner Sources in Nursing Historical Research: A Thorny Methodological Problem

Abstract

Professionally trained nurse historians of Canadian nursing have intensified the interest in primary sources and the limitations associated with those sources of Canadian nursing history. These documents often pertain to the activities associated with a professional organization, hospital, or school of nursing. These sources shed light on developments in nursing but only from one perspective, that of leadership. Therefore, the picture of nursing that emerges is one-sided. This situation is not unique to nursing history research. It presents a methodological problem for all areas of historical research. In order to gain a more complete picture, the researcher requires evidence from the rank-and-file, or from those nurses who carried on with the practice of nursing. The following anecdote appeared in the pages of a 1935 issue of Canadian Nurse: Miss Marion Boa, a graduate of the School for Nurses of the Montreal General Hospital and of the McGill School for Graduate Nurses, has had a varied experience in administration and teaching in schools of nursing, and private duty nursing, and is now superintendent of the Aberdeen Hospital, New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Being in need of an incubator for babies, and lacking the necessary funds, Miss Boa ingeniously improvised and had an inexpensive but efficient incubator made out of an ordinary wash boiler at a total of $8.50...It all goes to