The UNSPOKEN Rules Every 1950s Nurse Followed

- So many things we still do. We still count the narcs; some units still have narc keys. I remember the crisis when nurses accidentally left with the keys in their pockets.
- We still stay late to give report. Not only do we stay to give report to the oncoming nurse, but also at the other end. We have to get there 15 minutes early so we can get report to the new oncoming nurse. - So it's an extra 15 min in the am and an additional 15 min in the evening (or vice versa when working nights).
- You still have to take a graded test on making a bed with hospital corners. It's the first skill you learn, and you have to do it in front of a teacher and all your peers watching.
-We still refer to Doctor Lastname, that has not changed.
- You still do not correct the doctor in front of the patient. You wait until you can get to a quiet spot.
- When doing clinicals at the hospital, we were expected to be there before 6:30 am and we didn't get paid. I was shocked when you said that student nurses get paid, even if it wasn't much!

When do we get to the part about how different it was then compared to now? Almost all of this stuff is still done today, minus the white dress, cap, and shoes.

I graduated RN in 74 All of these things ! Applied during my training Down to My White Clinic Oxford Shoes ! As students we were Patienra to our fellow classmates Making A Bed with another in it giving Saline Injections to each other no Stupid Oranges used in my class Drew Blood from one another more ! Had 24 hours a week Clinical Last 2 years Gave Meds with out Supervisor The Narcotic Count Yes Same God Forbid it did happen a couple times The Other Nurse Getting off Work after the Count Took the Keys Home have to drive back to hospital, I never Would Stand for a Dr but Yes it was Taught ! To always give up your Char nurses Station always did get patients charts for Drs , We always had to make rounds with the Drs Give reports to the Next Shift coming o duty More Yes still have my Cap in a Box up in a closest here at home I retired 3 years ago

I have been a patient in three different hospitals in the UK in the past ten years. The staff made more
noise at night than they did in the daytime! I swear they did it out of spite. It sounded like they were throwing tin trays at the walls! The politicians keep promising to bring back matrons, if only they would. I don’t honestly think most of the staff wouldn’t know how!

God bless these women ❤

❤🎉🎉😮

They looked and acted so professional. Maybe I'm the only one but I really miss that.😢

My mother was an RN in the 1950's. She spoke about all of these. She was required to live in a nurses dorm for 3 years with strict rules.
Many nurses today are in it for the money, as wages have increased so much over the years.

Many of these rules were an abuse of power, plain and simple. And demeaning to all nurses.

This goes for every occupation for woman she's not allowed to get married nor get pregnant before women had rights for maternity leave. Doctors gotten away to sexual harras nurses back then .

I remember a doctor complaining about me. His complaint was that I did not show him the respect he was entitled to as a doctor. The head nurse did not defend me. This was in 1990.

There's a structural decision the narrator makes at Rule #1 that nobody in the comments has identified yet, and it's the mechanism that transforms this from a 12-rule countdown into something more precise.
Rule #1 is not an item on the list. It is the explanation of the list. The narrator tells you this explicitly: 'And the strange thing about number one is that by 1958 it was nowhere written down at all. It was the assumption under every other rule on this list.' A countdown whose final item recontextualizes every item that preceded it is not a countdown. It is an argument built in reverse — 11 pieces of evidence followed by the thesis they all prove. And the thesis is devastating in its precision: 'A calling was paid in vocation, and a hospital's expectation of a nurse's time and a nurse's body was therefore essentially unlimited.' If the work is a calling, compensation is not salary — it is meaning. And meaning has no overtime rate. No narcotics log. No scuffed shoe inspection. No clock-out time. The standing, the cap, the pin, the silence, the unpaid charting — every single rule was enforceable because the underlying assumption was that the hospital's claim was total. That is what makes the structure work: the countdown does not end. It explains itself backward.
But the narrator deploys a second device inside that architecture, and it is the most clinically precise observation in the entire documentary. Rule #4 — the nurse-doctor game. 'The nurse phrased her observation as a question. She offered the information without seeming to. She let the doctor arrive at the conclusion she had reached 15 minutes earlier and she let him think it was his.' And then the narrator does something remarkable: she names what the game produced. 'The nurses who became good at the game — at protecting patients through a hierarchy designed not to let them — built a kind of skill. The hospital did not name and did not pay for but absolutely required.' The institution built a hierarchy that forbade nurses from contradicting doctors. Then the institution required nurses to find ways around that hierarchy to protect patients. Then the institution refused to acknowledge, teach, or compensate the skill required to do so. That is a closed loop. The rule creates the danger. The rule forbids addressing the danger directly. The institution requires the danger to be addressed anyway. The skill that addresses it is invisible, unnamed, and unpaid. The nurse-doctor game is not an anecdote. It is a structural diagram of how institutions extract labor they refuse to recognize.
And the narrator traces the formal mechanism that made this architecture possible back to a single document: the Florence Nightingale Pledge, written in 1893 by a woman named Lystra Gretter at a Detroit hospital. Every graduating nurse on Eleanor's floor had stood and recited it. 'To aid the physician in his work.' The subordination was ritualized — spoken aloud before family and faculty — before any nurse ever entered a hospital floor. The hierarchy did not need to be enforced because it had already been sworn to. That is not a workplace rule. It is an oath. And the narrator shows you the consequences of that oath persisting unchanged for 85 years through one precise detail: Linda Richards, the first American trained nurse in 1873, described her night shifts at Bellevue in almost the same terms Eleanor experienced in 1958 — 'the gas turned so low the patients' faces could not be distinguished.' The silence Eleanor walked into in 1958 was the same silence Richards walked into 85 years earlier. 'And the rule had never once been written down.'
And then the narrator closes with Eleanor herself — 26 years old, fastening her pin, walking onto the medical-surgical floor at 6:58 as she had done every working day for 2 years and as she would do every working day for the next 26. The cap is still in a box. 'Wrapped in tissue in the attic of her daughter's house.' The physical artifact survived the institution that required it. And the narrator's quietest structural argument — the one she trusts you to feel rather than state — is that the women who navigated this system were not defined by it. Eleanor kept the cap. She kept the pin. She kept working for 26 more years. The rules described what was demanded of her. They did not describe what she was.
This is not a nostalgia video. It is a documentary about three nested institutional mechanisms — the meta-rule that made all other rules enforceable, the invisible skill the hierarchy required but refused to name, and the oath that encoded subordination into ceremony before the first shift ever began — disguised as 12 rules your grandmother followed. And the narrator's achievement is that she built a countdown whose final item does not conclude the list. It explains why the list was never written down in the first place.

My mother was a head nurse in 1971. I remember the uniform, the pin, the cap (kept in a hatbox overnight), the shoes, the stockings, and her special watch with a second hand. She also wore a short fluffy wig that set her cap off just right. I remember her polishing her shoes every night. I also remember that she worked a lot longer than eight hours per shift. My dad would always pick her up after work. She would call him, but he almost always had to wait in the parking lot until she came out. I was a little girl, and my sister a toddler. We were looked after my my grandma, who had been a nurse herself for 50 years. Amazing to think of how much they gave.

I trained to be a LPN in high school. Graduated 1962 at 17. Got my NYS LICENSE when I was 18. YES. This film was my life, 100%. The training was every 6 weeks in the hospital. It was a tough but excellent training. I STILL make my bed like that!

My aunt was a nurse in the 1950s, and she always said nursing was as much about discipline and appearance as it was about patient care. Different era entirely.

Nowadays, student nurses are free from a three-year servitude. Instead, they borrow to pay for $50k / year tuition and fees for private schools' nursing programs. Or they can gamble for admission to subsidized state schools, with a 10:1 ratio of applicants to openings. Is this better?

Yup , 4 years as a male student nurse, following those exact rigid rules then 30yrs in the profession . It has changed alot since way back then, and not all for the better mind you. Too much focus on the money / gain nowadays and what the individual can get out of it; what's in it for him/her. Nurse training is totally insufficient today with the result that many can't think critically and interpret the subtle signs that the patient is deteriorating right in front of them. There's alot to be said for huge value in terms of actual experience the 3 year Diploma nurses benefitted from. They graduated and could stand on their own feet and be independent from the get go , vs new nurses today who need an additional year of ' residency' experience just to allow them to function as a nurse.

C’est surprenant comme les ÉtatsUnis ont une culture de castes.

When I first started in hospital nursing, older nurses would jab me in the ribs to stand as "the Doctor " approached the station.

An otherwise interesting topic, but so over dramatic that it grates on the nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. Burdensome ai click bait…

Why can't content creators simply use a human being to read a 15 minute video script rather than using AI to mispronounce words and context???? I'm getting to the point I'm avoiding entire accounts like this so I don't have to listen to their crap narration. This needs to end somewhere.

I graduated diploma RN ‘69. I have always been able to hold my own. I was the patient’s advocate. And I saved some doctors’ rears. They saw the patient for 5 minutes. I did hands on for 12 hours. As time went on I was asked by several doctors why I had not considered going to medical school. I might have been very direct but I always was respectful. They returned the respect.

Everything here is true.❤😂

My mom got me hooked on CHerry Ames Nursing Mystery book series In my teens back in the 80s and we had any discussions about nursing requirements
.

What I find sad is that they dropped the 3 year programs made it an 18 month program. You can tell the difference in the nurses as far as their skills and dedication to this career.

My mom was accepted to a hospital diploma nursing program in 1953. She got married and was promptly kicked out of that program. Luckily she was accepted to another school that didn't have that rule.

Some of these rules and others were also for dental hygiene schools. Shoes checked, no hair on color, nails examined, not speaking to the dentist whose checking in your patient.
Plus, study, study, study

Graduated 1991. We did get tested on making beds with hospital corners, and had to wear white uniforms. Thank goodness, they stopped making us wear caps. On the floor, we did see older nurses, who were still wearing their caps.
We didn't have to stand when a doctor entered the room, but we were expected to give up our seats at the Nursing station , so the docs could sit down and chart.

After watching this, I feel like I need to get up and go find my old nursing pin. I know my cap is still somewhere in a box.

So much bs. Wore scrubs. Didn't give up seats to mds

My mother made us put our top sheet on with hospital corners. After bed was made you didn’t get on it til bedtime that evening.

Unfortunately my wife has been hospitalized 6x in two hospitals. Now they talk extremely loudly right outside the patient’s door - even at night. My sickly wife had to get out of bed one night and struggle to the door to ask a group of nurses to please stop talking loudly right outside her door and stop with all the “F” bombs. Very, very unprofessional these days. Not all of them, but many of them.

06:57 shows a can of BROWN shoe polish when talking about a tin of WHITE shoe polish. Lame.

I started in old hospital school, Peter Bent Brigham School of Nursing, part of Harvard Medical School. We could use their library. Back then schools had dormatories or in our case, the rented apts.for the students. The neighborhood wasn't particularly good. One of the worst ghettodbin Boston was across the street and behind the Mission Hill Church. St. Alofonus St. Was divider. You picked up the unwritten rules pretty quickly. We had a big dister, a year ahead. We had a hankerchief style hat. It didn't go on until you hit the hosoital and classes were conducted in it. One time, my uniform got caught on a railing or something and it ripped. The nursing teacher came in and said, "Miss Goodrich! You look dishevelled!! She scared me and me go back to my quarters. Wecalso had navy blue capes with red interior and PBBH embroidered on the collar. I didn't make it through. I did attend college in same area. Ended up by training and showing dogs and was a medical transcriptionist. I got notice by a person who became my mentor and got me into non-traditional modalities which would prove useful later on. I was a tumor registar because the coders found that I had gone to nursing school. I said why didn't you go to the boss. You are closer, lol, so I gave ut a shot. 100%. That job became manager for entire cancer program and I sat in first certification exam. Came in first out 250. I eventually decided to try nursing again at my dad's insistence. That time, I passed with flying colors. But when I was a tumor registrar in the 80's, the hospital was letting go the hospital trained nurses who didn't have same skill set and knowledge. We were taught to triple check meds. Oftentimes the instructor would come in and quiz you on meds. Every night you had read charts for next day assignments, write down Meds and look them up in the PDR and Drugs.com is so much easier, lol. But there was a huge gap. I hsd advanced skills that only very seasoned OB nurses had. They required being precepted for 6-18 mos. They had been hired but difference was old school ready to hit floor as a working nurse who could be placed into a charge nurse position. Who had the better education? Old hospital schools did. It has become a problem now because instead of hands on education, they are using AIA dummies and AI programs to interview patients. I hate to be the one to burst the bubble, but asking patients for why they came in and do the first interview for patient, it drove me nuts. I can ask people a question 10 different ways until they can understand it. AI wasn't programmed for every scenario. It's exasperating to ask a pertinent quesyion and it always answers I don't understand and then primptd appear which aren't appropriate. There are things that require hands on and nursing skills cannot be taught through this approach. You get admitted. The nursecshould come in sdmit you and its not just about vss. They have to give history. You check medscand you develope an individualized careplan. This seldom happens. Very rarely havecI seen a doctor, even when I am deteriorating. Its all protocols now and one protocol is appropirate for every situation. One nurse didn't know SASH method. I had a cast on. That's automatic CSM and checking that cast isn't causung any friction. They give meds that aren't appropriate. Some require a licensed MD in good standing in thecstate, not an audacious PA who didn't look the drugs up snd they caused me harm. Nurses weren't flushing IV,'s, they hung blood and that requires two nurses, one hanging it and the other reading the order from the chart. There should be a fiotered IV line,vbut none of them did that either. Nobody is doing full body checks. One was laughing about bubbles in the IV. They do this funky thing by deliberately sdding air to make the blood boil. Its haxardous, edpecially with population you are dealing with. Those people could hsve a clit hiding that breaks off and that causes more problems. They don't just look at monitors or EKG's. They want tropinine levels which take over an hour each. You hsve judt lost the golden hour to use clot busting drugs. Yeah not avfanvwhen the businessvis more impirtant than the patient.

Anybody ever read Cherry Amens?

There were female Doctors in 1958 a story of how they were treated would be interesting female doctors and female surgeons . And rules they followed or rules the broke ?

I trained to become a practical nurse in 10 months, at a local vocational school, graduating in 2006.

We spent 8 hours a day in a classroom for the first 2-3 months then started doing 2 or 3 clinical days a week at area nursing homes and hospitals.

We did learn how to make occupied and unoccupied beds but there was no strict scoring system. You either passed or failed - as it was with most of the hands-on skills we learned - and my instructors were determined to not let anyone fail so they’d patiently coach students through task as many times as it took to pass and perform the skill confidently.

We were taught to respect doctors, senior nurses, other staff, and the patients of course. We were taught the nurse-doctor game as well, where if you thought the doctor had made a mistake, you presented your concern in a way that wouldn’t offend the doctor. However, if the doctor still didn’t make corrections or you had ANY lingering questions/concerns you were told to address it with your charge nurse immediately. Most of the doctors we encountered during clinicals were approachable, eager to teach, and several of them insisted on being called by first name only.

Marriage and pregnancy wasn’t a big deal during training, as long as you were able to attend the minimum number of clinical and instructional hours required by the state. If my memory serves me correctly, we could only be absent 10 days (80 hours) during the entire 10 month program. You were given a couple opportunities to earn back hours by volunteering at weekend events held by organizations but you still could only earn a maximum of 2 days/16 hours that way. If you missed more than 80 hours, you were terminated from the program and would have to wait until the following instructional year to reapply/reattempt. One of my classmates was 4 months pregnant when she started the program but she graduated on time, delivering her baby and returning to class a week later.

Our clinical uniforms were 2 pieces and we wore pants, not skirts, although a long skirt WAS an option for those with certain religious or personal beliefs. They were rough, itchy, stiff polyester and completely white (practically see-through!), save for a forest green stripe along the shirt collar and an embroidered line with our school name. They had to be clean, free of stains and holes, and neatly pressed so they weren’t wrinkly. We had pin-on name tags, wore all white shoes, and did not wear hats. A watch with a second hand, stethoscope, and black or blue pen were part of the uniform too. No strong perfume, excessive makeup, long or artificial nails, or dangly earrings or jewelry were permitted. Small stud earrings and wedding bands were ok. Good hygiene was a must, which should seem obvious, but to be honest, a male student was once pulled aside and asked to wear deodorant as their hot uniform caused excessive sweating and led to pungent body odor. Hair preferred to be a natural color (no neon green, purple, rainbow, etc.) and if it was shoulder length or longer, you had to wear it in a ponytail or bun.

For graduation and pinning, we were allowed to order a set of all white scrubs of any style or brand we wanted but still had to wear the all-white shoes.

Graduated in 97. We still had some older drs who expected this behavior.

I remember when I was in the LPN program in 1992 and 93, I was so proud to receive my cap and at graduation receive my pin and stripe for my cap. Our teacher who was an old fashioned nurse for many years taught us to keep our uniform at a certain length, to make sure our underwear was not visible under our slips and especially keep all hair off our collar of our uniform, not even the slightest slip of hair or she threatened to cut it off. We were also told that our caps were never to be worn outside the hospital before or after clinicals. It was to be kept in a special cap carrier so it would stay clean and undamaged. Unfortunately after graduation I took my state board exam to receive my license as an LPN and did not pass. I was crushed. Clinical calculations was hard for me as was pharmacology. I was going to retake it in another year while I worked as a CNA, but I became pregnant with my first child and was so sick and was put on complete bed rest for the rest of my pregnancy due to complications. I then struggled with whether I should return after to finish my plan to finally get my LPN but fell so in love with my beautiful boy I just couldn't leave him. I went on to have 3 more children over the years, never returning to my dream. My Aunt who I admired who was an RN told me that even though I didn't finish I was still using all that I learned in caring for my children and caring for my grandparents in their home in their last days so that they didn't have to go to a nursing home. Then this past fall I cared for my mother in my home while on Hospice. It all came flooding back, emptying her catheter bag, doing vitals. Monitoring her medications keeping clear notes on everything. It meant so much to me to be able to do this for her. The night she died my children now adults along with their cousins all surrounded her bed with me holding her hand. I talked to them and explained to them what they were seeing as each stage happened. She died peacefully with us all by her side. I realized with my training it allowed me to keep her home instead of a facility. I felt honored after she died to prepare her along with the hospice nurse who pronounced her, to bathe her and prepare her for the funeral home to pick her up. I am so proud to say that my oldest daughter at 22 is working as a CNA and going to college to get her RN, my mom told her before she died that she was so proud of her and knew she would make a great nurse. Another generation of nurses for our family. BTW my husband is also a retired RN. He was only 13 semester hours away from getting his masters when he had to leave school. I think it's so sad how no one wears their caps anymore. You hardly know who is who anymore without looking at their badges. For me the Cap was a badge of honor. God bless to all of the nurses out there ❤

None of these rules really surprised me. And most would continue to be very much present for at least another ten years past 1958. I'd say the silence 'rule' probably became increasingly difficult and unrealistic to enforce as ER departments grew in cities, more electronic equipment came fixtures in the wards , and later on, visiting hours were relaxed.

eI graduated from King's County School of Nursing Brooklyn New York 1971. Sad to know that new nurses do not have the experience and committed feelings towards the profession other that having a good job and able to make lots of money if you want. Where are the American trained nurses?

Now it’s yakking all night long, condescending and dismissive. You know the real nurses because they stand out like spotlight

They were Hot...But...Couldn't Act Hot.
Like Stewardesses...with some differences.

When nurses wore uniforms and caps they were respected as professional. Nurses now come to work in gym clothes, hair not combed and expect respect. I remember when scrubs and fluff hats came along. Sister said it was the decline of nursing respect. She was right.

We had to kneel in a doorway and bow our heads as a priest walked by, no matter what religion we were...men and their EGOS!

My mom went to nursing class around 1950 10 years before me. She said she was not allowed to be married while a nursing student and could not be seen smoking in your uniform. I remember my mom going to nurse in the white dress, hose, shoes and her hat with two black strips. In the winter she wore a cap and was not allowed a coat. My mom shared that she had to attend many clinical hours during the day. It was hard to study. The nurses had to stay on sight in the dorms and would try to study under covers at night with a flashlight and hoped was not caught. Maybe if the rules followed then were followed now people would not be stealing medications. I have gone to the hospital with my mom to visit family members. On the door it had isolation, she would say, that is not true isolation like it used to be.

Walking a step behind has nothing to do with being a "handmaiden". It's hierarchy, and it comes from the military custom of a junior walking a step behind and to the left of a senior. Doesn't matter whether the junior or senior are male or female, so there goes the whole "handmaiden" thing.

How many of you owned green & red pens, and 1/2 dozen mini flashlights?