Open Collections

Yong, Hui Ling

Valorization of nursing practice is common in the Covid-19 pandemic. Framing nursing practice with a heroic lens is not innocuous for the profession. This project explores how nurses came to be seen as heroic in pandemics, with a particular focus on this phenomenon within the 1918 flu pandemic, and it examines the effect of a heroic narrative on nursing practice. The everyday work of nurses becomes heroic during pandemics due to societal needs and expectations of feminine caregiving. Findings from literature from and about the 1918 influenza pandemic showed that self-sacrifice was foundational to the valorization of nurses. Self-sacrifice in nursing practice originates from values of femininity but has transcended gender boundaries becoming entrenched as part of nursing identity. The evidence demonstrates that nurses working during the 1918 flu pandemic did not portray themselves as self-sacrificing or heroic in their writing. Further, the literature also revealed the undervaluation and under-recognition of nurses’ contributions to healthcare despite the tributes to nurses during pandemics. This chronic unappreciation of nurses in healthcare is attributed to the undervaluation of caregiving work in a patriarchal society and is problematic for the profession. Strategies targeting changes to nursing education are foundational to shifting the nursing profession away from sacrifice as a necessary condition for practice to recognizing the nursing expertise required for nursing work.

Graduating Project

eng

2023-07-28

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/85340

UBCV

Graduate

DSpace