Trouble with “Status”: Competing Models of British and North American Public Health Nursing Education and Practice in British Malaya

Two distinct nursing styles fought for dominance within the nursing world in the interwar period and British Malaya provides a historical laboratory with which to study the varied goals of British and North American nursing. Where the British approach in the field relied upon the notion of “character,” the North American model favored a more techno-scientific approach emphasizing the importance of leadership. The “organic” British approach appears to contrast with that of American colonial policy and that of the American Rockefeller Foundation (RF) in the Philippines, where there was a concerted attempt to lay down a legacy and create “lighthouses”