In 1987, Canadian reporter and writer Kathleen (Kay) Amelia Rex prepared for the RNAO Foundation the 1987 RNAO Foundation Appointment Book – Special Historical Edition. The 1987 daily agenda has long past its usefulness, but the historical record that Kay assembled is unique and timeless.
Here is the foreword that Kay Rex wrote for the book:
FOREWORD
"Now in its seventh decade, the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario was born in the midst of the Roaring Twenties. — Those were the days when Flapper Fanny rolled her eyes and did the Charleston, while Pop’s new automobile was back-firing its way up the street, emitting fumes that augured a future filled with pollution, and an army of new diseases.
Canada was chiefly a land of tiny settlements and isolated family groups scattered across its miles of field and bushland. When a farmer smashed his hand while felling a tree, or his child came down with diphtheria, there wasn’t much he could do except rush for help to the nearest tiny outpost hospital — if he had a horse that could get him safely over the trail or dirt road he had to take to get there.
Nurses stationed at these outposts never knew what problems the day — or night — would bring. On her abrupt arrival at a hospital in Saskatchewan, a very pregnant woman flung herself on the nearest bed, and said 'Catch the baby, nurse.'
The nurse leapt into action, and seconds later found herself with a newborn baby in her hands.
Today there are planes and helicopters to speed the pregnant, the ill and the injured to the nearest hospital; the outposts have become a rarity except in certain isolated areas, and in the Far North.
During the Thirties improved working conditions were sought for hospital nurses who had none of the fringe benefits such as pensions and malpractice insurance known to nurses today.
Furthermore, when budgets were tight registered nurses often were fired, to be replaced by students who worked for less money.
Until the founding of the Ontario Nurses’ Association in 1973 as collective bargaining agent, the RNAO helped nurses bargain with their employer under the Labor Relations Act.
Fifty years ago there was a demand for higher education standards in the country’s schools of nursing, and by 1933 the first baccalaureate degree course in nursing was established at the University of Toronto.
Today the degree course is offered by 21 universities, and the Canadian Nurses’ Association vows that by the year 2000 a baccalaureate degree will be the minimum requirement for entry into the profession of nursing.
Eleven universities across the land offer Master’s degrees in nursing, and the first students have been admitted to a doctoral program co-operatively run by McGill and the University of Montreal. Plans already are underway to establish another such program at the University of Alberta.
Nurses and doctors learned a great deal from treating severe burns and injuries during the war, and this pointed the way toward the current specialization epitomized by today’s high technology intensive care units.
At war’s end the RNAO initiated plans for a placement bureau to help returning nurses find employment. In addition, a program based on a wartime curriculum for nursing assistants was prepared by the RNAO, and was established to train returning servicewomen as assistant nurses.
The RNAO’s struggle to obtain legislation placing control of nursing within the profession was rewarded in 1951 with establishment of the Nurses’ Registration Act described as 'a landmark in the history of nursing in Ontario.' It gave the organization legal responsibility for establishing minimum standards for schools of nursing, registration and discipline of nurses.
A highlight of the Sixties was the founding of the College of Nurses of Ontario which took over those legislative responsibilities formerly belonging to the association and the Government’s nursing branch which until then had been responsible for approval and inspection of schools of nursing.
During the Seventies the RNAO established an objective-type machine-scored examination (in English and French) which nurses were required to pass as a condition of registration. This testing service was sold to the College of Nurses, and later became the nucleus of the CNA’s National Testing Service which is available to nurses and nursing assistants in Canada.
Achievements of the RNAO include establishment in 1972 of the RNAO Foundation to provide registered nurses and members of the public with an opportunity to work together to develop and promote nursing practice in response to changing health care needs.
There are nearly 188,000 registered nurses working in Canada. This means a ratio of one RN to every 115 people, which is one of the highest ratios in the world. More than 100,500 nurses work full time.
In an age when organ transplants and new life-sustaining devices are creating a host of ethical questions, nurses are finding more than ever that they are being called on to make decisions, and take responsibility for their actions. Legally, as illustrated in the Grange Commission hearings related to infant deaths at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, they are on the front line.
Where is nursing headed as the world looks toward the end of the Millennium? The future is theirs!"
-Kay Rex, May 1987
