Numbers, narratives, and nursing history

This work is intended to foster dialogue on moving beyond a nearly uniform reliance on purely qualitative accounts, in the form of narratives, to port ray nursing's past. To this end, this work demonstrates the manner in which one type of quantitative approach broadened understanding of the relative importance of educational background as a factor in completing training amo ng women who entered an early hospital-based nursing program. Primary sourc e data includes detailed records from a Midwestern hospital school of nursi ng, covering the period from 1897 to 1937. In regard to educational backgro und, this research suggests that a high school diploma was not an asset in completing training. Concerning the larger methodological issue, it emphasi zes that progress in nursing history, as in other areas of social science r esearch, demands that we use all of our abilities for quantitative and qual itative understanding.