Helen Sweet

University of Oxford, Modern History, Post-Doc

Followers

Following

Public Views

Address: South Africa

less

Interests

Uploads

Papers by Helen Sweet

Technology, Treatment, and TLC

Changing Places, 1948–1979

Language of Caring: Care and Nurses’ Lives

Portraits of a District Nurse

Colonial Caring

Manchester University Press eBooks, Oct 1, 2015

Grant and the School of Human Ecology Alumni Faculty Professional Excellence Award, and was named... more Grant and the School of Human Ecology Alumni Faculty Professional Excellence Award, and was named the ACOG-Ortho Fellow in the History of American Obstetrics and Gynecology. Her research focuses on the role of public health nurses in the evolution of maternal and child care, the history of consumerism and the history of home economics as a profession for women.

Download

War to Welfare State, 1939–1948

What Became of the Lady? The Interwar Period, 1919–1939

Routledge, Dec 12, 2007

Women In The Professions

At the Heart of Healing: Groote Schuur Hospital 1938-2008

Social History of Medicine, 2009

Groote Schuur Hospital (GSH) opened 70 years ago as the main hospital for Cape Town and the teach... more Groote Schuur Hospital (GSH) opened 70 years ago as the main hospital for Cape Town and the teaching hospital for the University of Cape Town. The visionary professors at the opening ceremony on 31 January 1938 would have cherished thoughts that the institution would meet the ideals of Flexner for a teaching hospital, but others could scarcely have imagined that its name would become known to virtually everyone, in South Africa and abroad.

Download

The Cape Doctor in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History (review)

Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2006

Download

District nursing in England and Wales, c. 1919-1979, in the context of the development of a community health team

The thesis views the development of District Nursing as a sub-profession or specialty within the ... more The thesis views the development of District Nursing as a sub-profession or specialty within the nursing profession together with the emergence and evolution of a team approach to community care during the middle sixty years of the twentieth century (1919-1979). This takes in the period immediately following the Nurses' Registration Act (1919), through the inter-wa,r period and Second World War, the introduction of the National Health Service, up to the reorganisation of Community Healthcare culminating with the Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors Act of 1979. By the end-point of the thesis the district nurse can be seen to have become an established member of the primary health care team within the community. Contextualising this period of change within the development of a community health team enabled the thesis to consider the relative importance of intra-and inter-professional tensions to the development of a sub-profession-in this case, district nursing. The study has included under this remit the extended professional roles, social and political professional issues and changing power bases, and the conflict between desire for recognised autonomy and for membership of a health care team. In addition, it has been possible to address issues of gender central to a profession largely composed of women throughout the period working alongside a medical profession largely composed of men. The subject has lent itself to a consideration of the degree of influence of medically-related technologies and of developments in communications and transport on the changing role, image and work-experience of the district nurse. The geographical focus of the research has broadly encompassed England and Wales, within which three contrasting regions have been selected for more detailed study of their comparability. These were felt to provide a varied and demographically representative crosssection of environments in England and Wales. Perhaps the most challenging, but also most innovative aspect of the thesis is the grassroots view given of the district nurse obtained through employing the viewpoints of individual nurses based on oral history supplemented with personal communications and written, autobiographical accounts. A case study of one district nursing association in Lancashire has supplemented this 'bottom-up' view of the nurse's experience and changing role. And a study of imagery relating to district nursing, incorporating various forms of media and professional representations, examines changing cultural images and social stereotypes of district nurses. Underlying changes that were taking place in district nursing at micro and macro levels are here quantitatively illustrated, such as-• the shifting pattern of district nursing associations throughout the regions of England and Wales in the inter-war period, the changing numbers of district nurses of various grades employed, and their varying workloads. The thesis concludes with a brief forward look to consider how the changes that were to follow the 1979 reorganisation were to affect district nurses' professional relationships, roles and images in the decade to follow. who have supported and encouraged me through the final painful months in a multitude of ways-I look forward to the next three years working with them and thank them for making me feel so 'at home' there already! Most of all, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my Supervisor, Professor Anne Digby, for her unstinting contributions of support and encouragement, advice and constructive criticism, steadfastness in the final weeks when I was inclined to rush, and for providing the appropriate form of stimulation when it was most needed-all of these are very warmly appreciated! Working with Anne and having her as a mentor, has been a wonderful experience for which I consider myself incredibly fortunate and I thank her for always believing in me and giving me the confidence to achieve. Finally I should like to thank my family for their loving support and encouragement throughout my studies over many years leading up to this point. Most of all my husband John, and children Jennifer and Robert, who have lived with this piece of research and have unfailingly provided much moral and intellectual support, loving understanding and encouragement throughout. I therefore dedicate this thesis to them.

Download

Historical Trajectories: Background, c. 1850–1919

Town Nurse, Country Nurse: District Nursing Landscape

Generalists and Generals: District Nursing Professionalisation

Community Nursing and Primary Healthcare in Twentieth-Century Britain

... both. Susan and her staff have been incredibly Page 15. xiv ... sity. She is also very gratef... more

Wanted: 16 nurses of the better educated type': provision of nurses to South Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Nursing Inquiry, 2004

Wanted: 16 nurses of the better educated type': provision of nurses to South Africa in the late n... more Wanted: 16 nurses of the better educated type': provision of nurses to South Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries This paper is based on research in progress focusing on the histories of mission hospitals in the rural communities of KwaZulu Natal, while also building on earlier research into the pluralism of medical systems within the South African Cape. Sources have been drawn from a range of historical documents, including medical and nursing journals, the archives of a number of medical missionary societies and of the Overseas Nursing Association, but the research has also been informed by oral histories of a broad cross-section of health professionals who practised in South Africa. A large literature search included a number of biographies and institutional histories. The paper will be divided into three partsthe first provides a brief background to colonialism and the early nursing history of South Africa; the second looks in more detail at the role played by missionary nurses in establishing nursing as a profession and providing training opportunities for African nurses. The final part contrasts missionary nursing with the supply of, and work done by nurses from the Overseas Nursing Association operating within their quite specific, colonial remit. This will show how the two contrasting professional spheresone reflecting a fairly short-term commitment, the other, a much broader, 'vocational' involvementmay be seen to represent quite different colonial attitudes, and ultimately quite diverse outcomes.

Download

Establishing Connections, Restoring Relationships: Exploring the Historiography of Nursing in Britain

Gender & History, 2007

Download

Social Medicine and Medical Pluralism: the Valley Trust and Botha's Hill Health Centre, South Africa, 1940s to 2000s

Social History of Medicine, 2011

... 2 As a doctor in Durban at this time, Halley Stott had become interested in the role of nutri... more ... 2 As a doctor in Durban at this time, Halley Stott had become interested in the role of nutrition as a contributing factor in disease causation, and his vision in founding the Valley Trust and ... The renowned African agriculturalist, Robert 'Tree Man' Mazibuko, was central to this work. ...

Spreading Germs: Disease Theories and Medical Practice in Britain, 1865–1900

Nursing History Review

Helen Sweet

Uploads

Papers by Helen Sweet

Log In