Uncovering the History of Nurse Practitioners in the U.S.

In Making Room in the Clinic: Nurse Practitioners and the Evolution of Modern Health Care, Julie Fairman investigates the history of nurse practitioners and their practice in the United States and explores their contributions to current public health policy in the United States. Image courtesy of Rutgers University Press.

The tension between nurse practitioners and medical doctors has real implications for the average American’s ability to access high-quality healthcare at a reasonable cost. And for decades, those working in public health policy have struggled to define where nurse practitioners belong in the spectrum of health care workers while ensuring that patients have appropriate access to their services. With an NEH research fellowship, Julie Fairman, a Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, undertook research on the history of nurse practitioners that ultimately led to multiple publications and enabled her to take on public policy work that is of consequence to ordinary Americans seeking health care treatment. This work also helped Fraiman break new ground in the inclusion of nurses’ perspectives in discussions of health policy.

In Making Room in the Clinic: Nurse Practitioners and the Evolution of Modern Health Care (2008), as in many other articles and book chapters, Fairman investigates the history of nurse practitioners and their practice in the United States and explores their contributions to current public health policy. From her position as an expert in the history of nurse practitioners, Fraiman works with state legislatures and other organizations, helping them improve regulations so that nurse practitioners can practice to the full extent of their knowledge and skills. Changes in these regulations, Fairman states, are “critical for people to gain access to high-value healthcare—and they come out of the history I wrote about.” In thinking about the value of health care history, she said, “you have to connect that history to larger everyday events. One of the things I was successful at was taking the history of the nurse practitioner movement and connecting it to larger current events.”

Project Timeline (scroll for more)

2003

NEH research fellowship awarded.

2008

Making Room in the Clinic: Nurse Practitioners and the Evolution of Modern Health Care published by Rutgers University Press.

2011

Contributed to “Preparation of Women’s Health Practitioners,” a report by the Rand Health Foundation.

Contributed to “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health,” publication of the National Institutes of Health.”

2015

Fairman becomes the first nurse to sit on the Board of Trustees for the College of Physicians.

2018

Fairman is the first nurse to deliver the Kate Hurd Meade Lecture to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Fairman is the first nurse to deliver the Garrison Lecture for the American Association for the History of Medicine.

Fairman is the first nurse to address the general meeting of the American Philosophical Association.

2019

Fairman is the first nurse to present the Renee C. Fox Lecture in Medicine, Culture, and Society to the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Medicine.

What is more, Fairman was one of the first nurses to win an NEH grant and doing so helped legitimate her work in the eyes of historians and the health care community. The research and the book effectively launched her career, which in turn has led to shifts in nurses’ representation in discussions of health care. Fairman has been the first nurse to address many organizations, including the first to deliver the Garrison Lecture to the American Association for the History of Medicine, to sit on the Board of Trustees of the College of Physicians, to address the American Philosophical Association, and to deliver the Renee Fox Lecture in Medicine, Culture, and Society at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Medicine. She has contributed to and led the production of several reports, including “Preparation of Women’s Health Practitioners” for the Rand Health Foundation and the Institute of Medicine’s report, “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health.”