100 Years of nursing education at Mercer's Georgia Baptist College of Nursing

Georgia Nursing, Nov 2002-Jan 2003

In the 100 years since the Georgia Baptist College of Nursing of Mercer University was founded as the Tabernacle Infirmary and Training School for Nurses, the field of nursing has evolved into a highly technical profession.

The advent of the Intensive Care Unit, state-of-- the-art monitoring equipment and short hospital stays even after major health crises, have all served to transform nursing and nursing education. However, even with all of these and other changes, nursing remains at its core, a calling dedicated to patient care.

"One skill nurses have not lost sight of even with all of the technological changes is the ability to connect with patients," said Dr. Susan Gunby, dean of Mercer's Georgia Baptist College of Nursing since 1987. "Connecting is what nursing is all about."

Connecting was certainly the chief skill taught in the days of the College's founding. Dr. Len G. Broughton, a Baptist minister and physician, moved from Roanoke, Va., to Atlanta for the express purpose of opening a Baptist hospital that would train nurses. He opened the Tabernacle Infirmary on Thanksgiving Day in 1901 and followed with the Training School for Nurses in 1902.

In his address to the inaugural class dated Nov. 18, 1902, Brought.on clearly delineated his perspective on the qualities of an ideal nurse, which would be the focus of the curriculum at his school.

"You will find that the greater part of the good that you do will be in the sympathy you show," Broughton said. "It won't be so much how long you stay up, and how much you sleep, but the way you display sympathy like the perfume from the violet."

That first class in 1902 consisted of 10 students who served in the Infirmary, which was located at 42 Spring Street in downtown Atlanta. Broughton selected the students carefully. The students lived at the hospital. For the first nine months they studied medical reference books and wrote papers. If they showed proficiency after the probationary period, they could continue their nursing studies.

The students staffed the hospital during the day and attended classes and lectures in the evening in the dining room. At that time, Atlanta had a population of 81,000 and only two other hospitals-- Saint Joseph's and Grady hospitals. Health care needs grew with the city, and Broughton's enterprise attempted to serve those needs.

In 1903, the hospital and school were relocated to a leased building at 69 Luckie Street with the nurses' quarters next door. The next year, a 15-room addition was built that included a well-equipped operating room, elevator, laundry and furnace.

"Now we had a modern wonderful hospital, and it kept well-filled with patients," wrote the school's first nursing superintendent, Bertha Blair Burdine of her time at the school from 1903 to 1905.

It was Burdine who took five of the students with her to Gainesville where they opened a hospital and treated victims of a tornado for five weeks in 1903.

By 1908, the two four-story buildings on Luckie Street were joined, the facilities expanded to serve up to 20 patients, the hospital was incorporated, the nursing course expanded from two to three years and the medical staff had grown to 12.

The state granted the nurses training school a charter in 1910, allowing the school to confer the Graduate Nurse diploma for completion of a threeyear program. The state Board of Examiners for Nurses approved the Tabernacle Infirmary Program of Nursing in 1912, and the Board of Missions of the Georgia Baptist Convention purchased the Infirmary in 1913. The name was subsequently changed to Georgia Baptist Hospital and the Georgia Baptist Hospital Training School of Nursing.

The hospital and school remained at the Luckie Street location until 1921, when it moved to the location of Levi B. Nelson's former home at North Boulevard and East Avenue.

The School was a major source of trained nurses for the region by the time of World War II. Former director of the School of Nursing from 1961-1985 Kathryn Ransbotham wrote in her memoirs about that period: "Penicillin was not known until about 1943. The main medicine was sulphur with mustard plasters and turpentine stupes. Nursing was truly an art. Patients stayed in the hospital for long periods of time. Obstetrical patients stayed eight to 10 days."

To meet the demand for nurses during the war, Georgia Baptist became one of the first schools in the country to establish a Cadet Nursing Program in which the government would pay for the education in exchange for service in the Army or Navy, veteran's hospitals or public health agencies. The program accepted new students every three months in order to keep up with the government's needs for qualified nurses.

It was also during this time that the School expanded the opportunities for clinical experience for its students outside of Georgia Baptist Hospital. In 1937, students did clinical work at Egleston Hospital in Atlanta and University Hospital in Augusta, and in 1938 students did pediatric clinical work at Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C.