1926

National League of Nursing Education’s Committee on Grading begins its five-year (extended to eight year) program of surveying and documenting nursing’s ills: “The argument had to be made boldly and statistically that overproduction of graduates was the root of nursing’s difficulties and that nursing education and a hospital’s nursing service had to be separated” (Reverby, 169). This led to publication of “Nurses, Patients and Pocketbooks in 1928. Six years later, in its final report, the Grading Committee “recommended the expected: reduction in the number of schools; high entrance requirements; separation of nursing education and nursing service in hospitals; aid to hospitals to assist in the funding of nursing services; and public funding of nursing education. . . . hospital administrators, to a large extent were unsympathetic to the reform effort” (171). . . . The most serious problem with the Grading Committee’s work was its failure to prepare either a public ‘white list’ of the best programs or a ‘black list’ of the worst schools” (173). . . . Although the committee did not develop a mechanism for grading, its ideological impact should not be underestimated. It provided, for those willing to use it, concrete evidence of overproduction and exploitation. . . . it legitimated nursing’s push for reform. In no small way, it prepared the way for the acceptance of graduate staff nursing in the hospital. It also focused much of the political effort on establishing collegiate programs for an elite” (175).