[National Library of Medicine, Cataloging in Publication. Virginia Henderson. Videorecording.]

[Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine]

Virginia Henderson: I say that nursing is helping the patient perform those activities of daily living, all that's implied, that he would perform unaided if he had the strength, the knowledge, and the will, and to do this in such a way that he will be independent of the nurse as soon as possible. [Virginia Henderson]

[Music plays]

[A National Medical Audiovisual Center Production]

[In cooperation with Sigma Theta Tau National Honor Society of Nursing]

[Distinguished Leaders In Nursing, Virginia Henderson, March 1978]

[Interviewed by: Anne Bavier, R.N., M.N. Assistant Professor Eleanor Herrmann, R.N., M.S. Assistant professor Yale University School Of Nursing]

[Introduction by: Nell Watts, Executive Officer, Sigma Theta Tau]

Nell Watts: Hello, I'm Nell Watts executive officer of Sigma Theta Tau, the National Nursing Honor Society. We're joining today with the National Medical Audiovisual Center in Atlanta to bring you another in our Distinguished Leaders series.

This series is designed to introduce distinguished American nurses who have demonstrated their professional leadership and helped to shape nursing practice and science into a significant force for improving health care.

Sigma Theta Tau was organized in 1922 to promote education for nurses at the university level. Today, it is a dynamic force in the field of nursing.

It promotes research, creativity, and leadership. It provides grants and awards, conducts conferences and publishes scholarly papers. It collects and stores data on nursing research. Today's interview is a part of a public and professional program to tell you more about the history of women, of nurses, and their important leadership contributions.

Virginia Henderson is an outstanding nurse, educator, practitioner, author, and researcher. The sixth edition of Miss Henderson's textbook, "The Principles and Practice of Nursing," was prepared with Gladys Nite and published in 1978.

Miss Henderson prepared the fourth and fifth editions of this classic text from the original work by Bertha Harmer.

Miss Henderson has recieved awards from many sources including a nursing leadership award from the American Nurses Association, the Presidential Bicentennial award from Boston College, the Mary Adelaide Nutting Award from the National League of Nursing, an honorary fellowship from the American Academy of Nursing, and two honorary doctorate degrees.

Now, it is my pleasure to introduce Virginia Henderson and her interviewers, Eleanor Herrmann and Anne Bavier, faculty of Yale University School of Nursing.

Eleanor Hermann: When we study a profession, we are usually privileged to have one or two great teachers. The other great teachers, we must get to know through their writings. Miss Virginia Henderson has touched the professional lives of many of us through the literature that she has produced.

And today, we have an opportunity to talk with the very special human being behind those writings.

Miss Henderson, I think it would be appropriate to start the discussion by asking you, what were some of the things in your early childhood and in your early schooling that helped to sort of prepare you for the leader that you have become in nursing?

Virginia Henderson: Well, I hope you'll forgive me if I say that I don't feel like a leader. And I hope you'll forgive me if I say that, as far as being a great nurse is concerned, I would feel better if you thought of me as a great nurse because of what you had seen me do for patients rather than what I've written. [Two women seated to the left of Miss Henderson, Eleanor Herrman and Anne Bavier]

And apropos of that, I'd like to say what Mark Twain said about being good, that "It is noble to be good, and nobler still to teach others to be good, and easier." [Laughter]

So if you know me because of what I have written about nursing, to me it's very secondhand. And so if I've fooled you, that's nice for me, but I can't take that as a springboard.

But I can tell you some of the things that made me what I am, which I consider a very defective person, and if you want me to, I could list some of those terrible faults that I have, but that would be boring.

I think one of the great influences that we all recognize are our parents.  I have to say that anything I think I am is the result of having two very remarkable parents, and I think I have been kept in line by seven sisters and brothers...three sisters and four brothers.

Certainly I think we kept each other from having exaggerated ideas of our own importance. So I think the happiness of my mother and father -- my father used to speak of mother as "your incomparable mother" -- and I think that's a wonderful thing to happen to anybody, to be the daughter or son of two people who were happy together until the day they were parted.

My father was a lawyer, and really devoted all of his practicing life to trying to do something about the plight of the Indians. And for that reason, we grew up, I wouldn't say poverty-stricken, but certainly with no money in sight.

We had a lot that money couldn't buy. We had horses to ride, and a house and a garden, and pleasant associations, but there wasn't much money.

Anne Bavier: Tell me, in your childhood, didn't you go to school where your uncle was in charge?

Henderson: Well, we moved from Kansas City, where Father started to practice, to live in Virginia because Father had to be near Washington. All his cases were against the United States Government, so he had to be at the seat of government.

And he spent a great deal of time over in what was then called the Indian Territory, over in the Western states where the Indian tribes were that he worked with.

And they first thought they would move to Washington and then Mother and Father both concluded that it would be better for the children if we lived near or at, what would you call it, a commune...the collection of buildings around my grandfather's school for boys.

So we really grew up there with father being at home as much as he could until I was about twelve, I suppose, when we moved a mile up the road to a place called Trivium, our place was called Trivium. Now we are back, the family is back living in the collection of buildings that was known as Belleview High School.

So until Belleview High School closed, the children all went to that school. But when that was closed, my uncle established a school which was a school for the country boys in the neighborhood. And we all either walked or rode horses to school every morning.

There were about twelve boys, and I was the only girl. After that school closed, my uncle tutored my sister and me and two first cousins, and the first cousins were boys, and another boy who came there for the winter, who became Dr. Homer in Waterbury, Connecticut, who, I understand, still remembers that time with a good deal of affection.

Well, my father was practicing in Washington and the war was raging and we didn't know how long it was going to last. We thought it might last for years. And my two older brothers were in the service, and I wanted to do something.

And I thought that whether I nursed the military or whether I nursed in civil hospitals, that it would be helping, because people in civil hospitals were suffering terribly. And so when the opening of the Army School was advertised, it seemed to me that that was a good place to go, although as well as I remember,

I applied for admission to several New York schools that I think did not consider me a likely candidate. At any rate, my father went to see Miss Goodrich and, I think, persuaded her that I had some qualities that might go toward making an effective nurse.

I've always suspected that he persuaded Miss Goodrich because I was a little bit young. I was a little bit younger than the rules that they had set up for admission.

Hermann: Now this was the Army School of Nursing that we're referring to. Can you tell us something about the Army School and actually how it was conducted and your role as a student?

Henderson: Yes, well I remember a lot about it, although, when I think about it, it's as if it was a separate existence. And I always felt that way when I went on vacation and came back.

I felt it's almost as if you were diving into cold water or going into an entirely different environment because it was so different from civil life.

Miss Goodrich believed in the care of patients by educated people, and it was her idea that if you could prepare enough nurses properly, that the men who were wounded would not have to be cared for by aides who had almost no preparation, and that was, as you know, the English system.

And she thought that if we could, in the Army camps around the country, set up training programs for young women, I don't know whether we wanted men in them, because there were no men, I don't remember. But of course there were men, because they were in the medical corps, they did a lot of the work.

But she made this so appealing to women that we had ten thousand applicants and of those ten thousand applicants, they took two thousand. And I remember my associates in the Army School of Nursing as very remarkable people.  Not all of them necessarily brainy, but many of them were, I remember, Phi Beta Kappas.

I remember a girl who was halfway through her law course, I remember another perfectly charming woman who was an exterior designer, what do you call them, landscape architect.

Bavier: What about some of the nursing experiences you had, and clinical practice during those years at the Army School?

Henderson: Well, we were on, mostly, great big open wards, about thirty patients these wards would hold. And we did have some experience in a private pavilion where the families of the officers were put.

And I think it was a remarkable experience because, in the first place, Miss Goodrich was a person who knew everybody in nursing, she had been President of the American Nurses Association, she had been President of the League, she had been President, I think at that time, of RCN, but at any rate, an invitation by Miss Goodrich to teach in the Army School was turned down by very few people.

So that we had teachers like Mary Roberts, who was afterwards editor of the American Journal of Nursing, like Effie Taylor, who, afterwards, was Dean of the Yale School of Nursing, a perfectly lovely woman, Mrs. Parks, who married and left nursing, but she was one of the people that I remember best, Harriet Gillette was another person.

We had Ruth Taylor, we had exceptional teachers for those days, and the Army officers who were apparently willing to teach us anything they were asked to teach us, and we had unusual laboratories facilities. There was no dearth of microscopes and scientific equipment.

Hermann: There was another interesting facet about the Army School of Nursing, and that was some of the affiliations that you had, am I right?

Henderson: Yes, I had an affiliation with Henry Street Settlement House for visiting nursing, I had an affiliation with the Boston Floating Hospital for the care of children, that was the best nursing I saw anywhere, I think, and an affiliation at a woman's hospital in Washington that was not outstanding, but it did.

But I thought our experience in the Army School of Nursing at Walter Reed was exceptional for this reason: that the patients were men who had combat mostly, of course we had some units where we took care of corps men or personnel.

What was exceptional, I think, about the nursing in that hospital was that we all felt under obligation to these patients. We felt that there was nothing we could do for them that would make up to them for having lost a leg, or an arm, or have their faces scarred, or some awful, disastrous thing in their lives.

And so we wanted to do as much for them as we possibly could and we were regulated very strictly. We could only work eight hours a day. Miss Goodrich had told everybody connected with the school that any affiliation would end if they made us work more than eight hours, she didn't believe in it.

But we would try to hide, so that we wouldn't have to go if we knew that there was somebody that was coming out from an operation. We had to be sent off duty very often. There wasn't any of this feeling of, "Oh, thank goodness, it's almost time to go off."

Bavier: You said the Boston Floating Hospital was a good experience in terms of the care that was given. Can you elaborate on that?

Henderson: It was good because Miss Egan, who was the head of the nursing service, had a beautiful concept of nursing. And she believed that we should be as much mothers to these children as possible.

So for the inpatients, there were young children who were bed patients, there were others who came for the ride every day, because we took the boat to Marble Head every day and back, but for the inpatients,  there were nurses assigned to those patients, who gave them total care.

Each of us had three babies that were ours, and then when our sister nurse was off duty, we had six.

Hermann: Miss Henderson, while you were at the Henry Street Settlement House, I know that was a significant time in your life. What about that was particularly meaningful to you?

Henderson: Well, I'll have to correct just one thing, I did not live at the settlment house. We did go and see it, and it was a wonderful experience, because [?]  was still living and a lot of other people that we met that I wish I remembered more distinctly.

Actually, three of us lived in an apartment and my brother was working there, and we had a wonderful time because two of his friends and my brother came over for dinner every night, and one of the marriages was made there and another one was almost made, but we had dinner every night together.

One of the girls and one of the men cooked dinner together and my brother fell in love with one of my dear friends, Rosalie, because she dipped a peach in the boiling peas to get the skin off and he thought that was so fascinating that he almost proposed on the spot.

But that was a lovely summer because we also went to Teacher's College for theory and it was a really excellent experience. I loved it from the start because I realized for the first time, I think, that you didn't do things to people.

They wouldn't open the door to you if you weren't useful They  had all kinds of ways of refusing the help of the visiting nurse if they weren't effective. And I began to see nursing then as a family service, not as a service to the individual, and as something that you had to adapt to the needs of a whole family rather than just to an individual.

Of course, I learned how to improvise, too. I learned how to nurse without a lot of complicated equipment, and I think I acquired more respect for people who lived in abject poverty and yet made a really good life.

I remember a little woman whose husband had just died and she had five or six children. And she took care of them all day and she cleaned offices all night, and I just had so much admiration for them. I think it made me a more democratic person.

Bavier: It was based on that experience that it would've been your choice to go  back and practice when you were finished school?

Henderson: Well, I planned to do that, in fact I did do that. When I graduated, I went back to Henry Street. I did take two or three private-duty cases for friends, and I loved that.

But I realized that, at that time, it was, to some extent, slavery, because you were absorbed in that household, and a neighbor came and relieved you for a few hours in the afternoon, but you were so tired that all you'd want to do was go and take a good nap.

These were all obstetrical cases and  the babies did far more crying than they should have, I'm sure, because I really didn't know how to care of them. [Laughter]

But it was fun because I loved the families so much, and I got involved in their concerns.

Hermann: And then from the visiting nurse in New York...

Henderson: I went to Washington.

Hermann: Washington.

Henderson: Uh-huh. Yes.

Hermann: And while you were in Washington, what was that period of time, what did you do during that time?

Henderson: Well, I was just with the Instructivist Nurse Society.

Hermann: And it from there that you then went into teaching, am I right?

Henderson: I had been registered in the state of New York. And that summer, I think, after I was in Washington...I don't know whether I had left there, whether I'd resigned or whether I'd left for vacation –

but anyway, I wrote the state boards in Virginia, and Ethell Smith spotted me as a student of Miss Goodrich's and she had been a student of Miss Goodrich's and the because I'd had better preparation than most of the people who wrote that examination, I made a good grade,

and she spotted me as somebody who might help with the teaching in the schools in the state of Virginia. At that time, there were no full time instructors, believe it or not, not even one. She had, just the year before, had a demonstration in that school, in which she had done the teaching, but it was just for a period of a few months.

Hermann: This was in Norfolk?

Henderson: Norfolk. Norfolk Protestant Hospital. So when I went there, there was absolutely nothing to teach with except a [?] doll, a canvas-covered figure, and it was waterproof and you could wash it.

But it was in the morgue and there was no classroom and there was no library and the students came in one at a time.

Bavier: They didn't admit a class, you mean?

Henderson: No, they just dribbled in and there was one person, who I was told one time when I went there was the senior in the school. Statuesque Miss Byrd by name, and nobody would precede her into an elevator that had good sense.

I mean none of the other students. Everybody stepped aside for Miss Byrd.

Bavier: Let's go back a couple minutes to the end of your own school days, when you were at the Army School. Graduation was an interesting experience for you.

Henderson: Very.  They pulled out all of the stops for us. They had the Marine Band, some of our more talented members rode a pageant. And I was considered a good dancer in those days, and I was the West Wind, and I led a troop of girls in very scanty clothes.

We blew in, the winds, you see we came from the four corners of the Earth, into this Army School of Nursing and I blew in people from the West.

Bavier: You had a very special assignment during that time, didn't you?

Henderson: Yes, I think I was considered very frivolous. I did not make the ten outstanding students in the school, they thought of me as a frivolous southerner.

And as a southerner and another girl as a southerner, were selected to go down and invite Mr. Coolidge, who was then Vice President, and General Pershing to our final ball, which was at the Willard Hotel, a grand affair.

And we went, a great long limousine was sent for us, and we went to the capital, where Mr. Coolidge was in the biggest room I ever saw, he sat tight behind his desk as we approached him, and, as well as I remember,

Elizabeth Arthur let me do most of the talking, although maybe that's one of my weaknesses. I don't know, but anyway, I plunged in and invited him, and he sat there, doing this while we talked. And I realized I wasn't getting a very good reception from the beginning, but I didn't have sense enough to cut it short.

Anyway, he said he couldn't come because his wife would be out of town, and I, like an idiot, said, "Well, Mr. Coolidge, I thought that was the very time when men liked to go to parties." And he didn't crack a smile. Then we went over, we got out as soon as we could...

Then we went over over and asked General Pershing, and he was just the opposite. He strolled across the room, put his arm across my shoulder, his arm across Elizabeth's shoulder; we invited him to come to the party, and he said he certainly would on two conditions, that the two of us would dance with him.

Now the interesting part of that is that the New Englander, Mr. Coolidge, did walk through the room and General Pershing sent his aide. So that's the end of that story.

Herrmann: Well we were, before, talking about your first teaching job, we reverted for a moment just because that was such a nice highlight in your life. When you were teaching in Virginia, you had described some of the conditions duringthat time, and you had not really planned to be a teacher.

Henderson: No, I thought I would not, because I had come from a family of teachers, and I thought it would be interesting if I departed from the family tradition. So I was coerced into doing this, and I felt guilty at refusing.

And in those days, I was offered the munificent sum of 3,500 dollars a year, which made me feel rich as Croesus. And I went to this hospital school where, as I say, there was nothing to teach with, and I found that many of the doctors were not good teachers,

and that they weren't taking their assignment very seriously, and I don't blame them, they were paid nothing, of course, and they came to a class if it suited them, and did not, if it didn't, class could be cancelled at any time.

So I took over a very large part of the curriculum, and the other nurses, who were in charge of the different units, would say to me, if I said, "How would you like to follow up the classes in obstetrics or pediatrics," or whatever it was, they would say to me, "Well, what are you being paid for?"

And so I was made to feel that I was shirking my responsibility if I didn't do the whole thing, which of course was quite impossible, and I gradually got them to assume a little responsibility.

Bavier: What did you use for textbooks at that point in time? You said you didn't have much.

Henderson: We had no textbooks. Well, that's not true. We must've had the money to get some textbooks, and we had Maxwell and Pope for fundamentals.

And we must have had an anatomy text, and I expect Miss Stackpole's text was available at that time, I think it was. Because I think that when I went to Teacher's College and found that she was the best teacher I'd ever had in any subject, I think I knew her already, through her book.

Bavier: So what did you do to give literature to the students?

Henderson: I did something that was really very comical. I found that the United States Government publications were free to anybody who asked for them, so I got their catalogue, I went through it, I checked everything that I thought would be of interest to our students, and I ordered them as many copies as there were students in the school, and a few extras.

And in one day, or maybe several days, great trucks would draw up with bags of these things and the whole room that I had finally arranged as a library was filled with rows of these things that each student had a copy of. And it was excellent material.

Instead of having a text on communicable disease, there was a pamphlet on measles, a pamphlet on mumps, a pamphlet on diphtheria written by really crack people. So it wasn't such a bad thing for the students.

Hermann: You were teaching, then, for about five years, am I right?

Henderson: About. And during that time, we really accomplished a lot. We even got in communication with, or we had started transactions to get William and Mary, the college, to take over the, teaching the sciences, or to collaborate with that hospital school.

[?] who was commissioner of the mental hospitals, and of education -- prisons and education seemed to go together in those days -- but at any rate, he was  sympathetic to it. I left before it was accomplished.

Hermann: You left, then, to go Teacher's College at Columbia University.

Henderson: I realized I didn't know enough to be teaching all the things I was teaching. And it seemed a good time for me to go because we had gotten the school accepted in the state of New York, that was a great thing, reciprocity for our students, they could practice in New York State.

At that time New York State was the leader educationally, and everybody wanted reciprocity for their students. And we had several visits from the New York State inspectors, and the first time, we didn't pass, and I was perfectly delighted because that was a lever  for me.

This woman was considered a perfect ogre by the head of the school and the head of the hospital, who was a remarkable woman, but she wasn't an educator.

Hermann: When you were at Teacher's College at Columbia, you had association with many of the leaders of that time in nursing.

Henderson: Teacher's College, at that time, was the leading institution for preparing graduate nurses in almost any specialty, administration, teaching, public health, school nursing, and one of the first clinical courses, which are often said to have originated much later.

That was the midwifery and the obstetrical nursing course, under Harry Heschmeyer, which existed while I was there, which was in the '30s.  Well, I was an instructor while I was a student, actually. I don't think Teacher's College would like me to say this,

but I was on the instructional staff before I even had a BS. But I got my BS and MA, they ran together because Miss Stewart got a Rockefeller fellowship for me, which allowed me to get my master's degree.

Hermann: When you were there, you also introduced the first medical surgical nursing course, if I'm not mistaken, that really focused on patient care. Could you tell us about that?

Henderson: Yes. For the first years that I was there, I taught people -- perish the thought, I hate to think I did it -- but I tried to prepare the people who were teaching the first course to teach it a little more effectively.

But I think my main contribution, if you can call it a contribution, was to teach a course that Martha Ruth Smith had started, that I developed along a little different lines, but I used what she had taught me to the hilt, and it was a course in analyzing nursing method.

And it was the first time a lot of those people had been exposed to the study technique. I hesitate to call it research except that a great many of the studies they did were perfectly good research but limited because the time was limited, but it was an introductory course in the research method, in the analytical approach to nursing practice.

And I think it was wonderful that we got people away from this fierce loyalty to the method they had been taught. We would have people break up into groups of four, and two of them would present a method that they believed in, which let's say was the Hopkins Method.

And then the other two would present the Presbyterian Method. And then the whole class would challenge them and they would have to present evidence for why it was better to lubricate a catheter with vaseline than a vegetable oil.

Hermann: Sounds to me like you came out with the "Henderson Method."

Henderson: Well, we came out with the conviction that you must get the best evidence you could, rather than you must believe what somebody has told you. And it sent them into the literature.

And the students would say to me at the end of that course, and they'd think it was faint praise, but it wasn't to me, they'd say, "Well, Miss Henderson, if I haven't learned anything else in this course, I've learned how to find information on questions."

And I'd say, "Well, you owe me about a million dollars. That's the best ability that you could possibly have acquired, I'm delighted."

Bavier: Miss Henderson, this time, then, that you were at Teacher's College, was a time when you got very involved in what research was, and this became, later, some work that you did with Leo Simmons. Can you expand on that?

Henderson: Yes, I can. Leo was doing a study at New York Hospital, and Virginia Darricks was there, who was one of my students, and staunchest supporters, and a great friend.  [Image of Leo W. Simmons]

And he was looking for some nurse to go on this study with him, which the U.S. Public Health Service had asked him to do, which was to round up all of the research that was going on. They were, big national committees were saying, "We need a study of this, we need a study of that."

And somebody would say, "Well for pity's sakes, don't do that over again. It was done ten years ago, five years ago, twenty years ago. There's a perfectly good study."

But they realized there was no way to find out where that was published, they didn't remember enough of it. And so Mary, she and I thought that it would be a good idea to have a round-up of the research that had been done, and they asked me to direct it.

He was married to a nurse, he was very much interested in nursing, and he was studying nursing at New York Hospital. And Virginia Darricks suggested me to Leo as a nurse who might be helpful. I was just finishing the fifth revision of Harmer Henderson, I had  left Teacher's College, and I was very glad to have anything as interesting as that to do, especially because Leo told me that he wanted the nurse to do the survey work, which took me to about three-fourths of the states,

asking very interesting people of all sorts, from the presidents of universities to first-year student nurses, "What research have you done, what do research do you know that we should know about, and what studies would you do, if you had the resources?"

And that was an invaluable, wonderful experience for me. I met so many people and when that was over, I had so much greater insight into what people were thinking about nursing.

Bavier: So out of that evolved a book, did it not? And then what?

Henderson: Yes, well the U.S.  Public Health Service had financed us, so a report had to be written, which was written at the proper time. And Leo was made head of the Institute of Research at Teacher's College, and he really couldn't devote full time to it.

It was very difficult for us to get a book together, but we did manage it, dividing up the task. He took certain chapters to write, which he could write independently, and I took certain chapters. So that book, A Survey and Assessment of Nursing Research, is a collection of chapters, some of which were written by Leo and some by me.

And that did not come out until about '63, when I had already started the work on the Index. And the way that started, do you want me to tell you how that started?

Hermann: Yes. That was a very big part of your life. It was like eleven years of your work, wasn't it? Virginia Henderson: It took years to do it, and it took over four hundred thousand dollars, from the U.S. Public Health Service.

Different divisions, I think, financed it. But I attribute the origin of that to Florence Wald's imagination and enterprise, because while we were doing that, we created an enormous index, a file. And this file was being used by the students of Yale.

Hermann: She was the dean at the time.

Henderson: She was the dean at the time. And the division of nursing in the USPHS said, "Could you put this file into a condition so that it could be printed and made useful to everybody,” because anybody who wanted to know what research there was, used our file, it was probably the best resource there was at the time.

Florence was the person who really helped me to write a request for the funding of that. And it was started as a two or three year project group needed, but grew through repeated funding.

Bavier: So you spent that eleven years, approximately, then, surveying the research that was being done in all related literature?

Henderson: Well, the thing was, the file that Leo and I had built up was a spot check of the literature, and we couldn't claim that we had covered the whole run of any journal. And when you do an Index, you have to guarantee that you have looked at every issue of a journal.

So we gradually got the backing of the technical advisory committee, for doing that in a thorough way, so that we could say that we took three hundred journals, some medical, some nursing some public health, some educational journals, from various fields and selected from that, anything that was analytical, historical, biographical, and pertinent to nursing.

Bavier: That's an enormous amount of reading. When I see those volumes, I think of all thing things, of the enormous amounts that you read.

Henderson: I don't read all of them. I sometimes have as many as seven people on the staff, and sometimes only two of us.

Hermann: It was during that time period that you actually wrote The Nature of Nursing, am I correct on that?

Henderson: That and the little ICN booklet.

Hermann: Right, which is in how many languages now?

Henderson: About twenty.

Hermann: About twenty different languages. But The Nature of Nursing, then, really evolved from a lot of tjhe research that you had done for the Index?

Henderson: Well, in a way. What happened was, I had been asked to give the Clare Dennison lecture in the University of Rochester. And as usual Miss Goodrich said it very well, she said, "You always overdo it," and I do.

And I wrote more than I could deliver, so the American Journal of Nursing was interested in any Clare Dennison Lecture, and it was even more than the American Journal of Nursing wanted to publish. So Macmillan thought it would make a nice monograph, and it was enlarged to make a monograph.

And that is not so much research as my saying, this is what I think nursing is and if you believe this, this is the way it affects practice, this is the way it affects teaching, this is the way it affects research, and so it was an application of my concept to these different aspects of nursing activity.

Bavier: As time's gone on, lots of people have looked at you and your work and given you several awards and honors that I'm sure are a variety of things in your life, and given you an opportunity to meet with some other people. I'm thinking of your honorary doctorate degrees, your work with the Irish Nursing Organization, things like that.

Henderson: Yes, it's been a wonderful experience, of course. I don't know what you want me to say about it.

Hermann: You have several doctorates that have been awarded, you have one from Canada, am I right?

Henderson: University of Western Ontario, which was a perfectly delightful experience. The Canadians seem, to me, to take life... everybody seems to have a sense of humor in Canada. How they get it, I don't know, but they make a joke of things.

I'll never forget Dr. Williams' introduction of me at the time when I got that award, I had to address the Schools of Medicine, of Pharmacy, of Nursing, the graduate school, and I can't remember, Dentistry probably.

And his introduction was, “Said a monk, as he swung by his tail, to his offspring both female and male, from your children, my dears, in a few million years, will evolve a professor of Yale, Miss Henderson." [Laughter]

So that's a pretty good introduction to follow, because everybody is in a good humor from then on. So instead of it being a formidable experience, it was quite hilarious, we had a lovely time.

Hermann: And from what other universities have you received doctorates?

Virginia Henderson: University of Rochester, and Rush in Chicago.

Hermann: And you've also recieved recognition from some of the international organizations within nursing?

Henderson: Not international organizations, but some national organizations. I went to the British Isles, this last November, and spoke before the Association of Integrated and Advanced Degree Courses in Nursing.

It would be the equivalent of our Organization of Collegiates here. And they made me an honorary member, which I thought was very very nice of them, and Irish Nurses Organization say that I'm an honorary member, and they gave me their pin. Irish nurses are so lovable, they're just delightful people.

Irish nursing hasn't changed very much over the years, and they seem to feel a little badly about that, but they've got a working party now. I tell them they've just come in at a wonderful time, they can avoid all of the mistakes that others have made and just start ahead.

Hermann: I love the encouragement. And of course the American Academy of Nurses has also recognized...

Henderson: Made me an honorary member.

Hermann: Yes. What would you say is the most important thing for you to do at this point? I know you're working and you have plans for the future. Could you tell us about some of those?

Henderson: Well, I can say that I feel obligated to produce a publication that can be used in conjunction with the last revision of the textbook, which I've done with Gladys Nite.

Bavier: You just finished that recently?

Henderson: I just finished. That went on sale in January.  And it's perfectly wonderful, the feeling of relief that that's out of my head, because that took about five or six years. [Henderson, V. and Nite, G., Principles and Practice of Nursing (6th ed.) Macmillan: New York, 1978]

Hermann: Well, from a teacher's point of view, I have to tell you, we think it's perfectly wonderful, too, because we have adopted it for Yale School of Nursing for the fall.

Henderson: Well, we have a lot of Yale contributors, I have to tell you, I think if Yale doesn't adopt it, I think Yale would have to cut its throat.

Hermann: But I interrupted you, what other things are you thinking about?

Henderson: Well, we started out with the intention of giving non-print teaching sources, or learning sources, or whatever you want to call them, at the end of each chapter. In other words, audiovisual materials at the end of each chapter that are pertinent to the subjects covered by those 50 chapters.

And that seemed to be impossible for a  great many of our contributors. They did not seem to know how to locate these materials, or perhaps they did not have the time to review them and they did not want to recommend materials that they hadn't actually seen and used.

So we came through with a very uneven list. I suppose we have something like 5,000 titles in the office. But many of them are titles that I found, that I identified, that I certainly did not have time to review.

So we are in the negotiating phase with Macmillan, and I think that people are not yet, throughout the country, attuned to the idea that audiovisual materials are as important as print materials, because I'm not sure that they are convinced that this publication must be as thorough as I think it should be.

I think they would publish it, a brief list as a promotional tune. And I am not willing to do that. I like to feel as if I have an opportunity to list all of the excellent materials I think are available.

Bavier: In the same thorough way that you did the Index?

Henderson: Yes, in a sense. I don't know whether it can be as... I'm not too knowledgeable about this, so I have a young man associated with me in this effort, Malcolm Bryants, who is Head of Audiovisual Materials, University of Connecticut.

And he is interested in working on this, and I hope it will come out as a joint effort.

Hermann: Do you have any other dreams in terms of fulfilling or completing a particular idea that you have?

Henderson: No. I said something that was reported in an interview that worried me very much. I said, when asked something like this question, that I was not a person who planned my life. I don't plan...when I make something, I don't seem to plan it, it evolves.

So I've never thought of myself as having a career and I'll do this and then I'll do that, and in ten years I'll do the other. So I said to this perfectly charming young woman in England that I'd been pushed around, I meant by circumstances, I didn't mean by people, and I still think I will do that until I die.

Bavier: I think what you've shared with us is not only your personality and your warmth, but the fact that it's ongoing, and these projects. Right now, I want to see your newest index, as soon as you get it going. We want to thank you for sharing your time and your energy and your warmth, being with us today.

Henderson: Well, it's a pleasure to talk to you two people. I'll do it anytime.

[Music]

[A National Medical Audiovisual Center Production]

[In Cooperation with Sigma Theta Tau  National Honor Society of Nursing]

[Distinguished Leaders in Nursing]

[Virginia Henderson, March 1978]

[Interviewed by: Anne Bravier, R.N., M.N., Assistant Professor, Eleanor Herrmann, R.N., M.S. Assistant Professor Yale University School of Nursing]

[Videotaped at Yale University]