Dossier f101 - Weir, Jenny McMartin

File consists of a recording of Jenny Weir. Topics of the conversation include establishment of Queen's School of Nursing Sciences; division of work (1946) between University and Kingston General Hospital; long wait for integrated course similar to that of U. of T. Small percentage of young or female faculty in post-war years. Hilda Laird as Queen's first female head of Department. Faculty acceptance of two-person nursing faculty; happy singles faculty club. Establishment of Health Sciences division during 1960s. Courses included in Queen's nursing programme; high standards of admission, continuation; employers' high regard for graduates. Benefits of KGH training; room, board, tuition in return for services. Lack of professional clinical instruction to complement practical training, subject's provisions to remedy this. Early Red Cross funding for diploma courses in Public Health nursing (not at Queen's); origin of U. of T. nursing programme. Subject's development (1947) of Queen's Public Health nursing diploma alongside BSc programme. Student bursaries then available. Change to integrated nursing programme recommended, documented, 1960, 1964. Post-war Queen's campus: veteran student population; crowding: 'the School of Nursing replaced the mimeograph machine'. Vibert Douglas' instrumentality in planning School of Nursing. Learning from Jean Royce how to set standards, from Dr. Mackintosh how to administrate. Football as an excellent introductory attraction to campus life, spirit. Differentiation of nursing tam, rejection of sample nursing jacket as 'too masculine'. Responsible nursing student government. Orientation with Levana Society. Growth in nursing student registration. Engineering-nursing social alliance, overtures from Meds students, School of Business; subject's dislike of 'cattledrives', opinion that nurses should behave as ladies and gentlemen. Dr. Wallace's chauvinistic initial announcement of nursing programme. Entrance of men into nursing. Stress on students' mental discipline, problem­ solving abilities, research skills, for coping with changes in medical field; MA, PhD research work as the new norm. Nursing as distinct from medicine, not lesser in kind; reasons for growing number of women doctors, now no longer required to be brilliant, aggressive, exclusively dedicated. Nursing as an intimate service. Teaching, listening functions of nursing; importance of counselling. Cultural sensitivity, co-operativeness of university nurses compared with less educated nurses. Subject's initial loneliness in Kingston, 'not a good place for a single person'; party-giving solution, successes. Subject as first female President of Faculty Club. Omission to marry, not seen as a career sacrifice; reflection on self-uncertainty as young woman, desire to acquire grandchildren through marriage even yet. Interest in political science; discussing politics at Faculty Club, without becoming 'one of the boys'. Administrators as a lonely race; great friendship with Beatrice Bryce in consequence, acquaintance with Vibert Douglas. Full-time teaching load as administrator; approval of administrative teaching, Scottish tradition of senior faculty teaching freshmen. Keeping in touch with students in hospital schools, helping supplement their studies; Nightingale students' push for more arts and sciences courses in nursing programme.//Ontario government policy of reducing patients' hospital time; funds re­ quired for supplementary community clinics, not yet forth­ coming. Value of home care in reducing patients' circumstantial boredom. OHIP controversy; subject's concern for patient of small means, opted-out doctor's problem of bill­collection, possibility of salaried doctors. Profit-motivated company interference in occupational nursing. Special training for industrial nurses. Confidential status of medical records, even in schools; caution in mental health institutions; patient access to, ownership of, medical records; poor safeguarding of hospital records. Ethical difficulties in nursing; infant euthanasia, mid-term abortions; subject's belief in abortion as means of saving patient's life, not as birth­ control. Nurses' need for support systems while working in emotionally difficult areas; danger of blocking off emotional faculties, giving merely physical care. Terminal patient 'communities'. Private-duty nursing, inclusion in hospitals. Nursing research into improved care; clinical nurse specialists; nursing administration, leadership. Specialisation, diversification of nursing function. Mention throughout tape of Evelyn Moulton, Assistant Director of nursing in later years at Queen's.