Mary Eliza Mahoney: pioneering contributions to American nursing

Mary Eliza Mahoney

An overview of the contributions Mary Eliza Mahoney made to nursing, including her integration of women of color into the nursing profession, and establishment of the NACGN, later to become the American Nursing Profession. A discourse on how these principles are still in use today to assure the highest standards of care among nursing professionals, and in the industry in general. A review of how integration of race in the nursing profession has now led to greater integration of gender equality within the nursing profession, as men face some of the same inequalities minorities have faced entering the nursing profession, due to the perception that nursing is a profession for softer traits including caring and emotional type behaviors. Finally, the paper offers a review of these behaviors and how they relate to the nursing profession.

Introduction

Mary Eliza Mahoney may best be described as a pioneer of the nursing profession bringing together nurses of all different races to bring about better standards and a more realistic view of what the nursing practice should be when she was a nurse, and decades into the future. Many years after Ms. Mahoney became a nurse, Mary Eliza Mahoney was co-founder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, or NACGN, and also the first African-American to study and work as a professionally trained nurse within the U.S. (Bolden, 1996). This in and of itself is reason to pause and applaud her efforts.

The NACGN eventually united with the ANA or American Nurses Association. Ms. Mahoney had significant influence in nursing, helping to advance minority groups within the nursing profession (Weatherford, 1994). Ms. Mahoney first began practice as a private care nurse, later serving as a director of an orphanage for black children in New York. She later became one of the first members of the Nurses Associated Alumnae within the U.S. And Canada which later became the ANA.

Among the more memorable focuses of her career included promoting equality for women's representation in the field of nursing and for promoting women's right to vote (Bolden, 1996). Ms. Mahoney's theory of nursing practice was to integrate all women, regardless of race, into nursing, so that all nurses could provide good service and medical care to their patients. She did this by establishing an agency that today fosters the highest possible standards of nursing and promotes the rights of nurses in the workplace. The ANA today is much like the organization that Ms. Mahoney originally established. It lobbies to help established regulatory agencies in health care issues that affect nurses and the public; it works with Congress to establish fair nursing practices; it works to promote rights and provide a realistic view of nursing.

Ms. Mahoney's influence on nursing also serves as an example to help end gender inequality in the nursing profession today. Today racial inequality in nursing is not as much an issue as gender inequality (Winkelmann-Gleed, 2006). There are many opportunities to be had within the nursing profession, in fact because it is in healthcare; it is one of the few professions that have not been hard hit by economic difficulties. There are many subspecialties within the nursing profession that continue to do very well. Within the best-paying and most prestigious areas of the profession, there are many difficulties men have in succeeding well. This is often because nursing is still viewed as a women's profession. Thanks to women like Ms. Mahoney however, there are now many roles the ANA takes on including promoting gender equality for men in the nursing profession, so they are able to enter nursing for the same reasons women would, and with as many opportunities as women might have. Integration for men is just as important as integration for women.

Winkelmann-Gleed (2006) suggest men are often encouraged to move away from caring roles; thus it is important that men have opportunities to be seen as caring so they can be viewed as competent caregivers, as nurses are caregivers and require these qualities to perform their jobs in a functional and capable capacity. The same might have been said of black nurses in times of old. White women may have been preferred for select specialties or roles within the nursing field. But thanks to organizations including those established by Ms. Mahoney, such barriers were broken down and integration made possible as facts and reality replaced fiction. In the same way, fact and reality replaces fiction so that men and other individuals can now become competent and caring caregivers. The same is true in other fields where women can take on managerial attributes and be viewed as rational and instrumental to the workforce.

Ms. Mahoney was certainly a pioneer in the nursing field, setting the stage for future nurses and for the integration of a diverse selection of candidates for the nursing profession. She made it possible for many different personality types and different people to receive adequate representation, so the nursing force could be as diverse and comprehensive as possible. As stated previously.

Ms. Mahoney emphasized important values, including the most important which was that patients were provided with good quality care, and the best possible attention. In this way, the highest possible standard of care was always provided, regardless of the race, culture, religious or national beliefs of the nurse providing care. Gender can now also be added to those criteria, so that just about anyone with the proper training can provide competent and capable care to an incumbent. Ms. Mahoney established a set of "norms" that one can now see amply reflected in the "customary" or ordinary practices of men and women of any race (Winkelmann-Gleed, 2006). Ms. Mahoney will always be recognized for her significant contributions to nursing.