Foundation of Humanistic Nursing Theory
Logic of Phenomenological Methodology
P & Z HUMANISTIC NURSING THEORY
About Josephine G. Paterson
&
Loretta T. Zderad
Information on the authors of Humanistic Nursing (1988) has been gleaned from their book and from Nancy O'Connor's book Paterson and Zderad: Humanistic Nursing Theory (1993) as well as from communicating with Nancy O'Connor directly. She had contact with Drs. Paterson and Zderad and related that because of their retirement as well as their age they prefer not to be contacted further on their theoretical ideas. They would prefer other nurses to continue in their theory building in their stead. Nancy O'Connor, an Adult Nurse Practitioner, was an Assistant Professor of Nursing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan (O'Connor, 1993).
Dr. Susan Kleiman, Assistant Professor of Nursing, Lehman College, City University of New York has worked with Josephine Paterson and Loretta Zderad for many years and has expressed that she will continue to develop and expand the theory of Humanistic Nursing. Her work and a list of articles and publications can be found on her web site http://www.humanistic-nursing.com (Kleiman, 2002) which is listed in the resources and on the reference page.
Josephine Paterson was born on the 1st of September of 1924 in Freeport, New York. To get some perspective of history and a sense of what occurred during their early and nursing years milestones will be noted. 1924 was the year that V. I. Lenin died, preserved and put on public display in Russia, J. Edgar Hoover was first appointed director of the FBI and the first of the Winter Olympic Games took place (About, 2003). Loretta Zderad was born in the summer of 1925 (June 7th) in Chicago, Illinois. To get some idea of the tempo of the times she entered, 1925 was the year that flapper dresses were in style and Hitler published Mein Kampf (About, 2003).
Both women spent their early childhood during the latter years of the "roaring twenties" only to face the lean years of the depression during middle childhood and their teen years. During the latter half of the 1920's some of the significant events included Robert Goddard launching his first liquid-fuel rocket, the Jazz Singer was the first talking movie, Lindbergh soloed the Atlantic, penicillin was discovered, and in 1929 the New York Stock Market crashed (About, 2003). Josephine Paterson from New York, was 5 years old at the time.
Loretta and Josephine spent their early school years during the depression of the 1930's. Sliced bread was first available in 1930, the Empire State Building was completed in 1931, Amelia Earhardt was the first women to solo the Atlantic, the Lindbergh's baby was kidnapped in 1932 and the atom was split. 1933 saw the end of prohibition, FDR launched the New Deal and Hitler became Germany's chancellor.
At the ages of 9 & 10 they must have heard about Bonnie and Clyde being killed by police, the problems with the "Dust Bowl" and lack of crop returns especially coming on the heels of poor economic conditions. They must have seen some of the soup lines and been affected by some of the poverty that hit a number of formerly employed and comfortable families. The later half of the 1930's, while Paterson and Zderad were on the brink of becoming teenagers, the Hoover Dam was completed, King Edward VIII abdicates the throne for a divorcee from the United States, Amelia Earhardt vanished, the Hindenberg caught fire, the Golden Gate Bridge was finished and opened for traffic, and Hitler annexed Austria and the tension with the Nazi's and the Jewish population in Germany was escalating.
1939 was the year World War II began. Josephine Paterson was 15 years old and Loretta Zderad was 14, both in their high school years. As teenagers and girls they must have been interested to see nylons on the market for the first time in 1940 (About, 2003) and dismayed watching the events of the Battle of Britain on the newsreels. An event that must have caught their attention was the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese with the number of casualties suffered and the majority of the Pacific Fleet destroyed in 1941. While the girls were in high school war raged on both sides of the continent from the Battle of Midway to the Battle of Stalingrad. The concentration camps and the ovens of Nuremberg horrified nations and cultures worldwide in the early 1940's. Strict rationing took place on common, everyday items such as butter, meat and eggs. Young men that they knew must have been inducted into the military and headed off to war.
The first computer was built in 1945, Hitler and his companion committed suicide, FDR died, and the United States dropped atomic bombs from the Enola Gay on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan in an attempt to end the aggression in the Pacific Rim. The girls were finishing school and starting down the path of their college careers.
Loretta Zderad majored in nursing in college and received her Diploma from St. Bernard's Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago in June of 1947 at the age of 22. At the same time she received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing Education from Loyola University of Chicago. This was at a time just after WWII had ended and it was during this college time that the United States' patriotic fervor was at an all time high.
Josephine G. Paterson was also learning the role of a nurse as well as work responsibilities during this same time period. She had graduated in August of 1945 with a diploma from Lenox Hill School of Nursing in New York. She finished a couple of years earlier than Loretta Zderad and within a year of WW ll ending.
During the time that they were in their first years of college a great portion of the young men had been deployed overseas both in Europe and the Pacific theatre. Rationing of needed supplies for the war effort was in full swing and more and more women moved out of homemaking and into the workforce. The bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 shocked the nation. While no mention is made in any of this author's readings on the subject, this author believes these world events must have shaped, to some extent, the views of Paterson and Zderad during these formative years and must have had some impact on their decision to go into the nursing profession.
Nine years later (1954, August) Josephine Paterson graduated with her Bachelor's Degree in Nursing Education from St. John's University in Brooklyn, New York. After moving to Baltimore, Maryland she completed in June, a year later, with her Master's in Public Health from the John Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
While Paterson was starting her Bachelor's and Master's programs, Loretta Zderad completed her Master's in Science in Nursing Education with a psychiatric nursing major from Catholic University in June of 1952.
During the late 40's the men returned from serving overseas and either married or brought wives home with them. The early 50's saw a great increase in the population which then became known as the "baby boomers." Prosperity was on the upswing and the men became the major workforce displacing the women that had been pressed into wartime production for lack of workers. The women, as was the social norm, were expected to stay home and raise children. However, a large part of them had become accustomed to working, receiving a paycheck, and being responsible for all decision making processes during the time the men were gone. Thus the trend for working women began.
Paterson and Zderad graduated and started down their career paths during the early and mid '50's. At the time, nursing was an acceptable vocation for women to be involved in outside the home. Also during this time the US was making great strides in technical advances that had been brought about by the experiences during WW II such as increased development of rocket power, and steps toward a more powerful combustion engine. The 1950's saw the beginnings of computer applications. General use of antibiotics was started with a lowering of the mortality rate from infectious diseases, and the initiation of a space program in the United States marked the beginning of exploration beyond earth's boundaries.
While none of this directly impacted Loretta Zderad and Josephine Paterson to this author's knowledge, the tone of the nation was optimistic, progressive, and characterized by a great pride in the accomplishments of its people. Life was good for the most part and the United States was emerging with the sense of being a "super power" in the world. By Dr. Paterson's own words, events and others help shape who we are.
"Humanistic nursing creates, happens within, and is affected by community " (P & Z, p. 37). Dr. Patterson wrote in Humanistic Nursing "each human being carries a view of persons, families and communities shaded by the views of his nuclear family. The past usually is corrected; it is never erased." Additionally,
the earliest childhood views are influenced over time, gradually and abruptly, and grow in complexity. The child's puzzlement is aroused by others' comings and goings, happenings within the family, immediate neighborhood, and adjacent community, and the world presented through books and technologically, on radio, television, and tape recorder. Each child attends these presentations with varying measures of complacency, questioning, bafflement, and involvement....In my child world there were books, radio, and the movies....For me, books , radio, and the movies brought into my world new aspects of fear, excitement, joy, love, horror, violence, imagination, and suspense. They depicted at times the ideal and at times the abysmal. Sometimes, despite everything, good triumphed. At other times regardless of the effort invested all was lost . (P & Z, p. 43)
Josephine and Loretta were young adults in the 1950's. A timeline of the 50's (About, 2003) reveal that the first organ transplant occurred in 1950, color TV was introduced in 1951 and Truman officially ended WWII by signing a peace treaty with Japan. The polio vaccine was created in 1952 and DNA was discovered a year later. Cigarettes Cause Cancer read the headlines in 1954, McDonald's Corporation was begun in 1955, Actress Grace Kelly married a prince while Elvis shocked the older population with his movements in 1956. The space age started with the launch of Russia's Sputnik in 1957 with NASA being founded a year later in the United States.
It was during the 1950's and 1960's that Zderad and Paterson did their formative nursing work, the basis from which they would draw from in formulating their Humanistic Nursing Theory and further refinement in the 70's and 80's. Paterson worked in the public and mental health field and Zderad in psychiatric health with leanings toward philosophy. The late 1960's (Vietnam War era) saw both of these nurses receiving their doctorates. Loretta Zderad received a PhD in Philosophy in 1968 from Georgetown University and Josephine Paterson her DNS in 1969 from Boston University with her specialty of psychiatric mental health (O'Conner, 1993).
During the timeline of the 60's (About, 2003) the Peace Corps was founded, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the Beatles proved to be a hit with U.S. audiences and in 1965 troops were sent into Vietnam. Three years later, in 1968 both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated and a year later the precursor of the internet was created called ARPANET which was designed for educators and researchers in various fields to communicate and share information.
In the 1960's Dr. Paterson & Dr. Zderad were faculty members in a graduate nursing program as well as a students working toward their PhDs. They taught a Humanistic Nursing Course in New York from spring of 1971 through spring semester of 1978 (Kleiman, 1986). During this time they refined, reevaluated and further refined their theory with the help and assistance of their students. Several of their students have gone on to further Paterson and Zderad's theory and add to the theoretical base.
In the 1970's, having received their doctorates, they saw such events as computer floppy disks being introduced for computers but most of the computers were using punch cards and were extremely large in size. In 1973 the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam and a year later President Nixon resigned from office. 1975 was the year Microsoft was founded, 1978 the first test-tube baby was born and the first female Prime Minister of Great Britain was elected (About, 2003).
Paterson and Zderad presented and published most of their work in the decades of the 1960's and 1970's. Other than a 1988 reissue of their 1976 publication Humanistic Nursing, no further work by these theorists has been found by this author. By 1980 both were in their mid 50's and are nearing their 80th birthday. Both are retired from nursing and today they are living in a small town in the southern United States. Their wish is for others to continue learning and expanding their theory.