UCC SONM 25 Year Book

UCC / School of Nursing and Midwifery

The transition years Nurse education based on the existing hospital systems of “apprenticeship type” training continued to exist in Ireland until 1994. Such training produced nurses who were highly skilled at clinical hospital work but were generally unquestioning and submissive. The apprenticeship system neither challenged the other healthcare professions nor made demands. Such an approach to education and an associated hierarchical system could have only existed in a world where women were prepared to be submissive, self-denying, amendable to discipline and hardworking within a routinised work system (McCarthy in Robins, 1997) Mark Loughery in a historical text, In Century of Service: A History of the IrishNurses andMidwives Organisation: 1919–2019, noted that in February 1919, twenty nurses and midwives disgruntled with their working conditions took the decision to establish a trade union. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) grew from those twenty nurses to a membership of over 40,000 nurses and midwives. The INMO have negotiated and been the public voice of nursing. Other representative organisations include the Psychiatric Nurses’ Association (PNA) and the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU). Over the years these unions represented nurses and midwives and played a significant role in the reforms portrayed in this book. The reform of nurse training in Ireland was influenced by the Working Party Report on General Nursing (Department of Health, 1980), The Future of Nurse Education and Training in Ireland (An Bord Altranais, 1994). Rationalisation of schools was recommended and some rationalisation occurred. As nurses and midwives approached the mid 1990’s many were critical of provisions for nurse education and practice but felt especially powerless to make the necessary changes. They may have been caught in their socialisation process which had encouraged the subservient role for which education was not considered necessary. Education required resources. Politicians and the Departments of Health and Finance had to believe in the worth of allocating resources and nurse leaders needed to emerge to lead. A profile of the major hospitals in Cork city and their influence on the development of nursing and nurse education is given in the following text. Each Hospital has played a unique role and today in 2019 continue to provide the clinical placement areas for students of the School.

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