An engaging study of the dilemmas faced by American nursing, which examines the ideology, practice, and efforts
at reform of both trained and untrained nurses in the years between 1850 and 1945. Ordered to Care provides
an overall history of nursing's development and places that growth within the context of new questions raised by
women's history and the social history of health care.
Building upon extensive use of primary and quantitative data, the author creates a collective portrait of nursing,
from the work of the individual nurse to the political efforts of its organizations. Dr. Reverby contends
that nursing's contemporary difficulties are caused by its historical obligation to care in a society that refuses
to value caring. She examines the historical consequences of this critical dilemma and concludes with a discussion
of why nursing will have to move beyond its obligation to care, and what the implications of this change would
be for all of us.