Imagining Gerontological Nursing: Canadian Nurses and Eldercare, 1905–70

Abstract

This article explores how Canadian nurses understood care for the elderly in the decades before geriatric/gerontological nursing emerged as a distinct subspeciality. Using articles, editorials, and advertisements published in the Canadian national nursing journal Canadian Nurse, this paper argues that from 1905 until the 1940s, Canadian nurses imagined care for the elderly as part of a wider paradigm of chronic and rehabilitative care, which integrated personal, domestic, scientific, and therapeutic practices. As the population of seniors grew after the Second World War, Canadian nurses joined other health professionals in defining old age as a distinct life phase best understood through the tools of scientific medicine. Embracing geriatric science held some advantages but also made it more difficult for nurses to sustain the integration of personal and scientific care. This article traces the historical shifts in how Canadian nurses approached care for the elderly and, in doing so, contributes to the larger project of making nurses’ work and knowledge visible.