My Name is Nurse

: Editor's note: From its first issue in 1900 through to the present day, AJN has unparalleled archives detailing nurses' work and lives over more than a century. These articles not only chronicle nursing's growth as a profession within the context of the events of the day, but they also reveal prevailing societal attitudes about women, health care, and human rights. Today's nursing school curricula rarely include nursing's history, but it's a history worth knowing. To this end, From the AJN Archives offers articles selected to fit today's topics and times.This month's article, from the May 1993 issue, is a tongue-in-cheek editorial by former editor-in-chief Mary B. Mallison. In it, she introduces us to the "PerceptoPhone"-an imaginary device that allows the wearer to access the thoughts of nurses. PerceptoPhones are used to educate hospital trustees on nurses' essential but often invisible abilities: to identify early warning signs of complications; teach and encourage; and carefully assess, soothe, and heal-abilities that are "hard to quantify with usual accounting methods." More than 20 years later, we still look for better ways to teach the public about nursing.