How Can Ward Teaching Be Made More Systematic?

Editorʼs noteFrom its first issue in 1900 through to the present day, AJN has unparalleled archives detailing nurses’ work and lives over more than a century. These articles not only chronicle nursingʼs growth as a profession within the context of the events of the day, but they also reveal prevailing societal attitudes about women, health care, and human rights. Todayʼs nursing school curricula rarely include nursingʼs history, but itʼs a history worth knowing. To this end, From the AJN Archives highlights articles selected to fit todayʼs topics and times.This monthʼs article, from the June 1926 issue, offers ideas “by which we hope to make ward experiences of more value to the student.” Author Mina A. McKay originally presented this material at a meeting of the Massachusetts State League of Nursing Education. She calls for more comprehensive morning and evening reports (“not just a mere reading of… orders”), the use of student experience records, ward clinics (“the type of bedside talk which supplements class room lectures”), and case reports presented by the students themselves. Efforts to improve clinical nursing education are ongoing, and in “‘Flipping’ the Classroom” in this monthʼs AJN, Diane M. Billings describes a relatively new way of translating clinical concepts into practice.