Church O M, Poirier S
Nurs Clin North Am. 1986 Mar;21(1):99-109.
Women as patients as well as providers within the health care area may yet benefit from the transformations taking place within the medical industry. The evolution from patient to consumer during this past century was fraught with reactions to overzealous paternalism and the misguided notion of separatism as a route to equality. Women's work was confined to her separate sphere and was limited to the privacy of the home or within certain circumscribed work roles "for women only," whereas the work of men involved functioning publicly in the world at large. Historically this situation relates to a key disability of nursing, that is, its dependent relationship to organized medicine which served to limit its advancement. For even though nurses could enter the public male environment of the hospital, they could do so only with the expectation that they were there to serve the physician. All women were limited by the Victorian mentality that prescribed unequal status for them in society. The active optimism which finally resulted in suffrage for women in 1920 offered promise of integration in educational and professional opportunities which remained unfulfilled decades later. In the last half of this century, the resurgence of social reforms dealing with civil rights, consumerism, and born-again feminism has once again stimulated great expectations. The ultimate solution must lie somewhere in the middle ground, where competence determines the provider and an informed compassion meets the needs for health care.
在医疗保健领域，女性作为患者以及医疗服务提供者，可能会从医疗行业正在发生的变革中受益。在过去的一个世纪里，从患者到消费者的演变充满了对过度热心的家长式作风的反应，以及将分离主义作为实现平等途径的错误观念。女性的工作局限于她的私人领域，仅限于家庭隐私范围内或某些特定的“仅限女性”的受限工作角色，而男性的工作则涉及在更广阔的世界中公开发挥作用。从历史上看，这种情况与护理工作的一个关键缺陷有关，即它与有组织的医学的依赖关系，这限制了护理工作的发展。因为即使护士可以进入医院男性主导的公共环境，但她们这样做只是期望在那里为医生服务。所有女性都受到维多利亚时代思想的限制，这种思想规定了她们在社会中的不平等地位。最终在1920年实现女性选举权的积极乐观情绪带来了在教育和职业机会方面实现融合的希望，但几十年后这一希望仍未实现。在本世纪后半叶，涉及民权、消费主义和重生女权主义的社会改革复兴再次激发了巨大的期望。最终的解决方案必须处于中间地带，即能力决定医疗服务提供者，明智的同情心满足医疗保健需求。
