Voices Echoing Forward: One Institution’s Efforts to Preserve Nursing History

As we celebrate the Year of the Nurse and Midwife marking Florence Nightingale’s 200th birthday, it has never been more appropriate to commemorate the advent of professional nursing education. Historical research as a discipline is growing, and contributions are necessary in order to build our collective professional archive. This article addresses the importance of preserving nursing history for the purposes of reflection, education, and understanding its relevance to today’s practice. Within we offer background information about one large teaching institution and an example of this hospital’s efforts to preserve its institutional history. To prepare for the celebration of the hospital’s 200th anniversary, three entities joined forces to support this effort by forming a dedicated nursing history committee. We describe the process of convening the committee and its purpose and provide exemplars of its robust outcomes to preserve and promote nursing history. Our conclusion includes a call to action for others to consider this model as a roadmap for replication.