This is a nice story: http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2010/11/graduates_from_flints_st_josep.html
In 1960, the 25 graduates of the Nazareth College/St. Joseph School of Nursing proudly wore white hats with a black stripe and white professional uniforms.
The uniforms told them — and the world — that they were nurses, recalled Carol Hunt, 70, of Grand Blanc Township.
As the graduates celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, the uniform is only one of many things that changed over the years.
The school, on Kensington Avenue near Longway Boulevard, closed in the 1970s.
Nursing school students — all female — were required to stand when doctors entered the nursing station and offer them their seats, Hunt said
“Now we can work elbow and elbow with them,” she said. “It’s just fabulous when that happens. You don’t work independently. You work as a team.”
In the summer, 20 of the graduating class of 1960 reunited in Frankenmuth to mark the 50 years.
“We had a lot of laughs, a lot of fun, a lot of remembering,” Hunt said.
At St. Joseph’s, the nuns lived on the third story, the students on the second floor. Nursing students could not have boyfriends in the dorms, leave the dorms in slacks or shorts without wearing a long coat over them, have shoulder-length hair, wear excessive makeup or date interns or residents, Hunt said.
Students became nurses in a three-year program with one year of college work and two years of clinicals and nursing experience.
“Things were much different then,” said Mary Conroy, a teacher at St. Joseph Nursing School. “It was a great education because they got so much clinical experience. ... Now there is a lot more chemistry, a lot more technical stuff, a lot more computerized care. I think nursing today is very, very tough.”
The St. Joseph Nursing School offered a diploma program. In the 1960s there were only four schools in Michigan that offered bachelor’s degrees in nursing, Conroy said. Now there are about 12, she said.
Hunt, currently director of private duty services at Medical Professionals in Flint, went on to get her bachelor’s and master’s degrees after graduating from St. Joseph’s when she was 19.
The skills she learned then are still in use today, she said.
“I just can’t give it up,” she said. “That is one of the neatest things about nursing... You use your nursing in your family, in all walks of life.”
In 1960, the 25 graduates of the Nazareth College/St. Joseph School of Nursing proudly wore white hats with a black stripe and white professional uniforms.
The uniforms told them — and the world — that they were nurses, recalled Carol Hunt, 70, of Grand Blanc Township.
As the graduates celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, the uniform is only one of many things that changed over the years.
The school, on Kensington Avenue near Longway Boulevard, closed in the 1970s.
Nursing school students — all female — were required to stand when doctors entered the nursing station and offer them their seats, Hunt said
“Now we can work elbow and elbow with them,” she said. “It’s just fabulous when that happens. You don’t work independently. You work as a team.”
In the summer, 20 of the graduating class of 1960 reunited in Frankenmuth to mark the 50 years.
“We had a lot of laughs, a lot of fun, a lot of remembering,” Hunt said.
At St. Joseph’s, the nuns lived on the third story, the students on the second floor. Nursing students could not have boyfriends in the dorms, leave the dorms in slacks or shorts without wearing a long coat over them, have shoulder-length hair, wear excessive makeup or date interns or residents, Hunt said.
Students became nurses in a three-year program with one year of college work and two years of clinicals and nursing experience.
“Things were much different then,” said Mary Conroy, a teacher at St. Joseph Nursing School. “It was a great education because they got so much clinical experience. ... Now there is a lot more chemistry, a lot more technical stuff, a lot more computerized care. I think nursing today is very, very tough.”
The St. Joseph Nursing School offered a diploma program. In the 1960s there were only four schools in Michigan that offered bachelor’s degrees in nursing, Conroy said. Now there are about 12, she said.
Hunt, currently director of private duty services at Medical Professionals in Flint, went on to get her bachelor’s and master’s degrees after graduating from St. Joseph’s when she was 19.
The skills she learned then are still in use today, she said.
“I just can’t give it up,” she said. “That is one of the neatest things about nursing... You use your nursing in your family, in all walks of life.”