NUR3508 Quality and Safety
NUR3508 Quality and Safety
Humanistic Nursing
Josephine Paterson was born on the 1st of September of 1924 in Freeport, New York. Loretta and Josephine spent their early school years during the depression of the 1930’s.
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 II ending.
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.
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.
Zderad received a PhD in Philosophy in 1968 from Georgetown University and Paterson her DNS in 1969 from Boston University with her specialty of psychiatric mental health.
Several of their students have gone on to further Paterson and Zderad’s theory and add to the theoretical base.
Paterson and Zderad presented and published most of their work in the decades of the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Dr. Josephine Paterson is originally from the east coast and Dr. Loretta Zderad is from the mid-west. They both were graduates of diploma schools and subsequently earned their bachelor’s degree in Nursing Education. Dr. Paterson did her graduate work at Johns Hopkins and Dr. Zderad did hers at Catholic University. In the mid-fifties they were both employed at The Catholic University and were assigned the task of working together to create a new program that would encompass the community health component and the psychiatric component of the graduate program. Subsequently they developed a collaboration and dialogue and friendship that have lasted for almost 40 years.
In 1971, Paterson and Zderad’s career paths led them to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Northport, New York. Both theorists used a three-pronged approach that integrated clinical practice, education, and research. Their theory of humanistic nursing presented a method for nurses in clinical practice to examine their experiences. They believed that by examining these experiences they could be analyzed, synthesized, and subsequently formulated into theoretical propositions which can become resourceful guides for nursing practitioners (Zderad, 1978, p. 4).”
Subsequently Paterson and Zderad began to integrate the concepts of Humanistic Nursing into a series of courses that they conducted around the country. During these courses they encouraged other nurses to articulate and describe their experiences of nursing. It is from these descriptions that the eleven essences, awareness, openness, empathy, caring, touching, understanding, responsibility, trust, acceptance, self-recognition, and dialogue, emerged. Humanistic nursing theory proposes that these clusters of phenomena can be ordered as common beliefs-values to nursing practice for these nurses.
Josephine Paterson and Loretta Zderad retired in 1985 and moved South where they are currently enjoying life. Although they are no longer active, they are pleased…
