Saul Ebema: Florence Wald received a Bachelor of Arts degree in physiology and sociology from Mount Holyoke College in 1938 and immediately enrolled in the 30-month nursing program at Yale University.
However, by the time Florence went to Yale University School of Nursing, there was beginning to be a shift in philosophy of care where the primary focus was on the disease, and not on the patient. This disease orientation was a result of the rapidly growing knowledge in medical science that was overshadowing everything else at the time.
You are listening to Personhood. The story of Florence Wald and the Hospice movement. This is episode 2- “the care of the terminally ill in the 1940s and 50s” and I am your host- Saul Ebema.
As American lifestyle shifted into high gear after the great depression, dance and music styles did as well. The upbeat tempos of swing music seemed to match the mood of the country. As the economy boomed, the people danced.
Archival footage
Saul Ebema: While the dance music got louder and fun, world events got louder and dangerous.
The Second World War had already started in September of 1939 in Europe. At first, the United States remained officially neutral in the conflict.
Archival footage
Saul Ebema: Even if the draft was not popular, in hindsight, it helped the United States to be ready in case of an attack. It was not long after that the Japanese empire ended America’s isolation from the war with a surprise attack.
While Americans were going through their day, all of a sudden, all the media channels were interrupted. Those who were listening to the baseball game between the Dodgers and the Giants over the radio where interrupted by this message.
Archival footage
Saul Ebema: Japan had staged a surprise attack on American military installations in the Pacific. The most devastating strike came at Pearl Harbor. In a two-hour attack, Japanese warplanes sank or damaged 18 warships and destroyed 164 aircrafts. Over 2,400 servicemen and civilians lost their lives. President Roosevelt knew that something had to be done.
Archival footage
Saul Ebema: As American soldiers marched on to war, the president acted as pastor in chief and led the entire country through prayer.
Archival footage
Saul Ebema: And off- America went to war.
Despite of the fact that America was in the second world war, the medical arena in the early 1940s was filled scientific discovery and a growing faith in medical authority. That faith in medicine was even strengthened by the development of injectable penicillin.
This new development showed promise in medical progress. Then there was the development of more anti-tuberculosis therapies that enabled the disease to be controlled. Not long after that, sanatoriums for tuberculosis patients were no longer necessary.
Music
Barb Newton: As medicine progressed, death came to be discussed only in terms of its avoidance, and any other conversation on the topic, at least from the American Medical Association, was practically nonexistent. Instead, articles regarding terminal diseases focused on symptoms and new treatment options rather than outcomes or mortality rates. Despite acknowledgment by at least some specialties in the medical profession that death was a part of patient care, the American Medical Association at that time was not willing to make this concession of inadequacy.
Saul Ebema: As a powerful coalition representing the entirety of the medical profession, the American Medical Association was the medical authority of the time, and their refusal to acknowledge dying patients greatly influenced society’s perception of terminal care.41 In the eyes of the medical profession, however, if it could not be visibly cured, it was not a medical concern, and discussion of such conditions was seen as counterproductive to medical efforts. To acknowledge dying was to admit that medicine had failed, and that the authority which the public had assigned to the medical profession was not deserved.
Veronica Drase: With the heavy focus on disease during that time, Florence was dismayed that nursing was lost in the treatment of the disease, and she questioned if she had made a major career mistake.
While still questioning her choice of career, she went on to work for the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Initially, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York was patient focused. That is what was attractive to Florence.
However, after their reorganization, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York took on a physician driven model of care that focused more on the disease than the patient. Florence found physicians were unprepared to accept her vision of care. She remained with the Visiting Nurse Service of New York for 2 years (1941-43) but left dissatisfied. For Florence, the art of nursing was being lost to the science of medicine, so she quit.
Archival footage
Saul Ebema: Florence had not anticipated how nursing would be heavily influenced by the medical model that focused on the disease and symptom treatment rather than the patient focused model of care. She left the nursing profession in 1944. Around that time, the Second World War was raging, and it was a difficult emotional time. Florence wondered if her beliefs about life and medicine fit the times.
Archival footage
Barb Newton: After that, Florence did the unthinkable and enlisted in the Army. She felt an obligation to help the military men and women who were fighting the atrocities of Hitler. Ironically, Florence was assigned to a small maternity ward at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Eighteen months later, the war ended, and so did her military service.
Veronica Drase: During her 8-year sabbatical from nursing, Florence became a clinical research assistant at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital on a surgical metabolism unit. It was here that she met her husband to-be, Henry Wald, one of Florence’s research subjects who was in officer’s candidate school.
Florence and Henry dated 3 years before he proposed marriage to her in 1948. Henry had completed his military service and had graduated from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in NYC with a degree in engineering. Because Florence’s father was dying, her mother had breast cancer, and her professional path was uncertain, she declined Henry’s proposal and there- the relationship mutually ended.
Archival footage
Saul Ebema: In Florence’s years as a researcher at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, the medical landscape was changing. In 1946, the Hill-Burton Act was passed and with it came the campaign to build more hospitals.
Barb Newton: With the building of hundreds of hospitals around the country due to the Hill Burton Act, hospital care for the sick became the norm instead of home care. This led to a new turn of events because more people started dying in the…