"Definite lines of influence": Catholic sisters and nurse training schools, 1890-1920

Standard histories of the nurse training school movement have focused on national leaders and organizations and have generally not included Catholic sisters, even though nuns had established approximately 220 nursing schools by 1915.

This study asks how Catholic sisters used their distinct understanding of nursing to shape their nursing schools and the nurse training movement in the United States between 1890 and 1920.

Historical methodology draws upon primary sources in archives of three women's religious congregations, the Catholic Health Association, and the University of Notre Dame. These include nuns' constitutions and letters, hospital chronicles, journals, minutes of meetings, training school records, annual reports, yearbooks, census records, and educational reports. Secondary sources include nursing, hospital, religious, and labor histories.

Catholic sisters adapted their nursing to bring it into line with modern society by establishing nurse training schools for both religious and secular women. This legitimized their nursing practice and enhanced their influence with students, physicians, and hospital groups. As nuns admitted laywomen into their schools and worked toward accepted standards of professionalization, they stamped their distinct understanding of nursing onto secular society.

The development of professionalized nursing drew Catholic sisters' schools toward common goals with non-Catholic programs. On the other hand, the sisters' historical construction of nursing in the 19th century, their unique relationship with physicians, and the obstacles they faced later, such as the Roman Catholic clergy's attempt to control evaluation processes, indicate a distinct approach to Catholic nursing. Questions remain as to whether nuns could hold onto their authority later in the 20th century.