Gerard Fealy PhD
Gerard M. Fealy (2004) A history of the provision and reform of general nurse education and training in Ireland, 1879-1994. Faculty of Arts & Celtic Studies (Education Department), University College Dublin
Contact: Gerard M. Fealy, School of Nursing, Midwifery & Health Systems, University College Dublin, Ireland
Abstract
The traditional system of hospital based nurse training in Ireland, introduced as a key part of the process of nursing and sanitary reform in the late nineteenth century, prevailed for over one hundred years as an integral part of the Irish health services. Traditional nurse training assumed a special character that remained largely unchanged throughout its one hundred years. It combined apprenticeship training, through theoretical and technical instruction in the care of the hospitalised sick, and a rule-bound regime of custodial and congregational control over the life of the student.
This thesis presents both an historical account and an analysis of the provision and reform of the traditional system of general nurse education and training in Ireland. Treating of the documentary historical evidence, the thesis presents a chronological account of the development of general nurse training and presents a critique of that development. The thesis explores the process of nursing reform in the late nineteenth century, the campaign for professional organisation in the early twentieth century, and the development of nurse training throughout the twentieth century. This thesis examines the derivation and the content of policy concerning the nursing curriculum, and the curricular experiences of the nurse in training throughout the period. The ideological influences at work in shaping the development of nurse training are examined and evaluated. In addition to providing a thorough examination of policy and practice in nurse education and training, the thesis proposes several reasons why nurse education and training remained outside the mainstream of higher educational provision until the end of the twentieth century, and why it was eventually replaced with a registration/diploma model in 1994.
