The unintended consequences of a male professional ideology for the development of nursing education

An exploration of the unintended and unacknowledged consequences of the nurse leader's actions reveals how adherence to this professional ideology has divided nurses and confined its proponents to professionally limiting and self-defeating values.

Abstract

At the turn of this century, early leaders of nursing education in the United States looked at the success of physicians in creating medicine's acceptance as a "profession." Trying to emulate this model, female nurses embraced a culturally and socially defined medical, male-oriented professional ideology that equated being professional with being scientific. In this article, an exploration of the unintended and unacknowledged consequences of the nurse leader's actions reveals how adherence to this professional ideology has divided nurses and confined its proponents to professionally limiting and self-defeating values.