Finnish Nursing Education Committee Reports as the Question of Dispute in Organizing Education and its Contents in the 1940s and 1950s

Authors

• Päivi Huhtela
• Leena Paasivaara
• Juhani Nikkilä

Abstract

This article is based on a dissertation on the development of Health Administration, which examines Nursing Education and its formation and implementation in 1945?1957 in Finland. At macro level the research concentrates on the planning of Nursing Education. Research material was collected from archive documents, publications and knowledge based on the memories of contemporaries. The research tradition of intellectual and administrative history was used. The interdependency between administrative operation and the organizations and operators was discovered. At the time most part of education was being governed by committee reports. However, the research results show that curricula of Nursing Education were influenced by different factors, i.e. education politics, committee reports and the National Board of Health. An international perspective to Nursing Education was introduced by leading nurses who had obtained experience in the North American education system as Rockefeller scholarship students. The administrative nurses at the National Board of Health had great influence both on Nursing Education and its curricula.