Interview with Linda Dowling

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES

ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1867

DOWLING, LINDA

DOWLING, LINDA (1940-)

Interviewed: 2019

Interviewer: Lea Goldstone

Index by: Lea Goldstone, Sophie Clark

Transcribed by: Teresa Bergen

Length: 1 hour, 2 minutes

First Interview Session (2019): Digital File

00:00:00

LG: All right. You can just say your name and spell your last name.

LD: Linda [Erlandson?] Dowling. My last name is spelled D-o-w-l-i-n-g.

LG: Perfect. So just tell me a little bit about your background growing up.

LD: Well, I grew up on a farm. I'm the oldest of four children. I have two younger brothers and a younger sister. I wanted to be a nurse from the time I was about four or five. My mother made me a nurse's cap out of an old shirt of my dad's when I was little. She was a seamstress, was very good at that. So I attended country schools, and I graduated from a one-room school and attended high school in Viroqua, Wisconsin.

LG: Perfect. And how far is that from here, do you think?

LD: It's about a hundred miles.

LG: Oh, okay.

LD: So not real far. Right.

LG: So did anything in your background, I mean, you said you'd wanted to be a nurse since you were little. But was there anything that sparked that?

LD: Oh, I don't think so, other than I would see pictures of nurses. Like sometimes on the news, or occasionally a newspaper. We didn't get one regularly, but I would see it and I always thought, that's what I want to do. I'd see them by the bedside taking care of people. Or I'd see them changing dressings or caring for children. And that's what I wanted to do.

LG: And did other girls or men in your community want to be nurses as well?

LD: I don't remember that anyone did at that particular time. Later on in high school, yeah. Then more girls did. At that time, very few men went into nursing. It was considered a woman's profession. Also, I didn't get a lot of support from my grandparents, Because there weren't a lot of professions that women were encouraged to go into. And one of the biggest ones was a teacher. And I had many 00:02:00teachers in my family. And especially my dad's mother felt very definitely that I should have been a teacher. And I also took piano lessons and sang in choir and did a lot of musical things. They thought at the very least I could have been a music teacher or something. But I wanted to be a nurse.

00:02:29

LG: So what made you choose Madison General?

LD: Well, I looked at several. I knew I wanted to do a diploma program. Those were the most widely available programs at the time. And I think actually UW Madison was the only BSN program available at that time. And those programs were considerably more expensive. I couldn't afford a real expensive one. Also, there was not as much financial aid. There wasn't even like the Pell grant or other 00:03:00things. So I looked at several diploma programs. And the nurse for our family doctor in Viroqua had, I don't remember if she'd gone to school, I believe she had gone to school here. But she also had three brothers that were doctors, and they'd all worked at Madison General as part of their--and she spoke very highly of that. She felt that was one of the better ones.

Also, I looked at the state boards, the result of the state board exams that all nurses had to take. And Madison General had a very high percentage of passage of the state boards. Which indicated to me it was a very good program. Just everything about it was positive.

LG: And you said BSN. What is that?

LD: Bachelor of Science in Nursing.

LG: Oh, okay. All right. Just wanted to get that defined. So did you have any 00:04:00perceptions of, or had you been to Madison before you came to school here?

LD: We'd been to school. We had family here, so we had been here for visits. But again, this was many years ago. People didn't travel as freely. We've been here a few times, and I always thought it was a, I always liked it. It seemed like a really big town at the time, and it was much smaller than now. And I liked Madison. I liked it a lot. I liked the things that were there that were available.

LG: And did you have any perception of what nursing school was going to be like before you got here? Or were you just coming in just--

LD: No, I had some perception. Because starting at age sixteen, I worked as, at that time, it was called a nurse's aide. Now they're CNRAs. At the time, if you were hired for this position, you were paired up with another aide and you learned on the job for probably the most was two weeks. And then you were on your own. So I had worked at the local hospital in Viroqua as a nurse's aide 00:05:00summers and weekends during the school year when I was in high school. And I also lived, at that time, then during the week, I lived with a doctor's family who was a doctor at Viroqua Hospital. And I did childcare and housework.

LG: So it sounds like you had a lot of medical background before coming.

LD: Yeah, I did. He was very supportive. He was very supportive of me coming into medicine. I know he was a graduate at UW. Yeah.

LG: Oh. So what was it like when you first got to Madison General?

00:05:40

LD: Well, it was really interesting, because they sent us all this information about all the things we needed as far as clothing and school supplies and all these kinds of things. So I very carefully went down the list. And I remember the first time we got here, be here at a certain time and we all met in the lounge, which is now offices of some kind. And started with meeting our 00:06:00instructors and different ones. And it was just kind of like oh my goodness, all these, and I believe at the time there were 63 of us that came. Introduced to our roommate for the first time. Because there were very, very few single rooms. Most of them were double. So I met my roommate, who was from Muscogee, I believe. We didn't keep the same roommates, because we had to go on affiliations. Meaning that we went out for like our psych experience or pediatrics experience to different places.

And also at some point, and I think it was after the first year, we were divided into groups like of nine or ten. And this is the group that we would go on our affiliation with. And so those were the people that we had the closest bond with.

But it was interesting coming into this, our first night, coming in and seeing. 00:07:00And we were supposed to come in our bathrobes. And all came in in robes and sat around in the room and got to know each other. It was a good icebreaker.

LG: And did you, I mean, you mentioned that nursing wasn't very encouraged, I guess, in your community. Did you find with any of the other girls that they shared kind of similar stories in that way?

LD: Some way, yeah, similar, I think. As far as, the community was encouraging about nursing. It's more just my immediate family. My folks were always very encouraging on that. And I did struggle between majoring in music or going into nursing. I couldn't afford to go to a four-year college. And I really wanted to be in nursing. Which was a really good decision because I've loved being a nurse, always. And I've still always used my music all through my life, the music things.

LG: And did Madison General offer any sort of kind of financial aid or kind of 00:08:00make it easier for you?

LD: Madison General didn't. However, things were quite different then. We had an alumni association at the local hospital. And I did apply for a scholarship there, which was for 200 dollars. Which was, the total tuition for three years was 600 dollars. However, back remembering again, student nurses were actually utilized as staff. So part of your tuition payback was you were working on different, you know, always with supervision. But you were still utilized as staff, which isn't what happens now.

LG: So kind of going off that point, what kind of activities did you do that were, I mean, did you do the same thing as like the RNs? Like the professional nurses as student nurses? Or what were kind of your activities in the hospital?

LD: Yeah, we did. Starting from the basic level. And it was very progressive kinds of things we would learn. We'd always have an instructor on the unit with us. And we started with very basic patient care. Like bed baths and personal care. And some of the things, which probably are not even done anymore. You did all of that. And how you maintained the environment in the patient's room, just a lot of emphasis on patient care, patient comfort, dealing with the family. Just a lot of emphasis on caring and empathy, being empathetic. Being a good listener. Just a lot of the things that have stayed the same in nursing. They just expand it. Yeah.

LG: So when did you transition from kind of that personal care education to more 00:10:00technical education?

00:10:05

LD: Just it was gradual as we went along. As we went along, it was very planned out, very structured. You started with personal care and then you progressed to medications. Depending on where we were with our classroom work, what we did with the unit work when we were in the hospital. It was very planned, very structured, very organized. High expectations. You were expected to maintain good grades in the classroom. And our first year of school, we took all our classes like chemistry and microbiology at UW. We actually went there for classes. We did not get credit, UW credit, because we were all in these classes, and they were all like microbiology for nurses. It was the same as what everyone else had. We had their books, but that's the way it was structured. So we had 00:11:00those classes. Plus then we had our nursing classes back here. And we had to maintain a C average or you were put on probation. Yeah. It was high expectations.

LG: So how did you balance all of that?

LD: You worked really hard. You learned to organize your time. Learned to prioritize. Plus we lived in the dorm. We didn't have a lot of choice as far as free time, particularly the first year. And interesting enough, we started out with 63 in our class, and I think we graduated with 38. People would decide this is not for me, I don't want to work this hard. I don't want to do this. Didn't make it for grades. Whatever.

LG: Interesting. So when you were able to steal some free time, what did you guys like to do just in and around Madison?

LD: Well, we did a lot of things that didn't cost a lot of money. (laughs) We didn't have really a lot of free time. Because as freshmen, we had four nights, Saturday nights, a month that we were allowed to stay out past ten o'clock. Otherwise, we had to be in. Not be in the lobby. We had to be in by ten o'clock. We had four nights that we could, if I remember correctly, probably three nights we could be out until midnight and one night until one o'clock. You had to sign in and out. And we had a housemother that was there all the time that watched out. And you were not late or the doors were locked and you were in trouble.

LG: Were there any like actual consequences for that?

LD: Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't remember what they were, because I never really had to, I know they got put on probation. There were letters sent to the parents. 00:13:00They would have privileges revoked. Yeah. There were definitely consequences. And we would do a lot of things like well, obviously we were interested in dating. We did a lot of, met a lot of the university students. We'd go to fraternity parties or we'd go out to the arboretum for picnics or go to the zoo. Go swimming on the beach in the summer. We formed some very close relationships within the dorm, and we did a lot of things together. We were supportive of one another.

LG: So, can you just take me through a day in the life of a student nurse at Madison General?

00:13:47

LD: Well, I'll think about that. (laughs) We would get up in the morning and get 00:14:00ready for the day. And we'd go over to the hospital cafeteria for all our meals, for our breakfast. And then from there we probably would come back to a classroom, to one of our classes here. Possibly it would be our dietetic class, caught be the dietician. We'd have probably a couple of hours of class in the morning. Well I would think most of the morning would be in classes here. And then we'd have our lunch break, and then we'd go to UW for, say, we'd have micro, our lecture, in the lab there. And then we would come back here and have another class back here. And we'd finish probably about five. And then we would go for our evening meal, and come back and study. And study. (laughs) We spent just a lot of time trying to cram and study. So it was just lot of work. And we 00:15:00had a small library here, which was specifically nursing library. We also used the UW library, went there and studied a lot.

And the other thing we might do some nights when we finished and came back with our class, we might, this was like in our first or the beginning of our second year, we'd be assigned to go and work on the units. They have a medical floor. So we might be there for three or four hours. Later on in our education, you'd have whole shifts. So you'd do the classrooms, labs, hospital, all of those things in one day.

LG: Wow. That's amazing. (laughs)

LD: And you know, it's interesting. Because, I don't remember, I'd been working for a couple of years, probably five or six years when the school, the 00:16:00three-year program transitioned to where they would do one year at a university and two years here. And I worked for the School of Nursing here then. And would go out and talk to the college kids and how they're doing. And many of those students would say once they got here, "We thought college was hard. This is a lot harder. They expect so much of us." We had heavy schedules. We did. And yet, that's what we expected. And you didn't have choices as far as am I going to take one elective this year or two electives? You had to do what was laid out for you. And we went year-round, year-round. That was the difference in that the diploma programs were three years, year-round. The BSN or the Bachelor of Science was five years, following the academic year. It's now a four-year program. But that was the difference.

LG: And so did you, I forgot if you said it earlier. But did you have any 00:17:00experience going in working at other hospitals outside of Madison General?

LD: Mm hmm. We did. We did, when we did our pediatric affiliation, we went to Milwaukee's Children Hospital., because it was a much larger hospital and we were supposed to learn all kinds of things. We lived in the dorms in Milwaukee.

LG: Were you mixed with other nursing students?

00:17:27

LD: There were other nursing students. Like I said we'd been broken down into our groups of eight or ten. And that was the group that went there. And there were probably, I'm not remembering for sure, but there were like three or four other schools there. I think Eau Claire had a nursing school that was there, and I think Saint Francis from La Crosse was in the nursing school at that time. And there must have been another one, I don't remember. So we all got to know each other.

And Milwaukee Children's was possibly our hardest affiliation. It was very 00:18:00intense. We got very little time off. I was there three months and I think I had two free weekends. And I'd requested one of them, because my aunt and uncle lived in Milwaukee and I wanted to spend time with them. Just a lot. It was very intense. Very intense.

LG: So what kind of things did you experience while you were there in Milwaukee Children's?

LD: Cared for some very ill children. I'd been around a lot of children my whole life, but never children that were so ill that had some complex problems. Also saw some very congenital, unusual things that today would be dealt with differently, I'm sure, than they were then. But things that we had never seen before. Like the children that would have hydranencephalies, and now that was treated. Also with all of those congenital things, we saw a lot of how the 00:19:00families and community related to some of those children. Like the spinal bifida and the cerebral palsy children. It's quite different now. It's much more accepted. There's a lot more treatment and more helpful things. But that was kind of difficult in a lot of ways to see these children that you wanted to make everything all right for them. But you couldn't, because that's what they had.

And I remember a specific case where the little boy was rejected by his family. He was like, he was the cutest little boy. But he had some pretty significant anomalies. And this family wouldn't take him home. He was a cute little redheaded boy. I don't know what happened to him after we left. But those kind of things make an impact.

LG: And to what extent did you use your practical training in helping those 00:20:00kids? Like how were you involved with them?

LD: Oh, you use it all the time because you're always, first of all, you would be very much aware of their skincare. You'd be aware of their physical limitations, so how you deal with them. also their mental acuity. What they could understand, how you would relate to them. How you would include the family in their care. And you'd learn, and I guess I learned this even more in future years in my practice, that we can learn a lot from families as to how they take care of their child, or what works for their child. But yet a lot of the stuff with them, the medication dosages, because we had to calculate so much out then. Things didn't come from the pharmacy all in blister packs and all prepared. We would have to calculate all the dosages for the weight.

There weren't things like IV pumps. So on these little children who would have 00:21:00IVs or be getting blood, you would count the number of drops per minute. And that's how it would be ordered, like 15 drops per minute. And you had to check like if somebody's getting blood, you had to count the drops every 15 minutes. It's very hard to do a lot of care when you're doing drops every 15 minutes on IVs. Depending on the age, but it was like every 30 minutes to an hour. So there are just a lot of things that are done mechanically, technically now, that we did. And you did it. I mean, that's just the way, that's part of the care, the standard of care.

LG: And did you have any similar experience at other hospitals? As Milwaukee Children's the only one that you guys went to?

00:21:50

LD: For pediatrics. And then we went to the Veterans Administration Hospital for infectious diseases. At that time, there was still more tuberculosis around. 00:22:00They were doing surgery for TB. We lived out on the campus out there and learned a lot about infectious diseases. That's where I learned about you never put anything on the floor. I just put my purse down there, and I rarely put my purse on the floor. Because we learned about not doing that. that was a good, it was a really good experience dealing with the patients there.

And then we also did three months at Mendota for acute and chronic psychiatric issues, which they no longer have Mendota. And they also had the children's unit in Mendota. And that was a whole different area of nursing, a whole different approach. And even the psychology classes that we took at UWL, or UW Madison here, most of us had not had any of the psychology kinds of classes in high 00:23:00school. And again, this was very intense. And it was a whole new field, a whole new way of thinking. Psychology and sociology, you think differently. So it was a whole new thing. And then we're at Mendota, then you're applying what you learned. And it's just a whole different way. And that was a really good experience. You learned a lot about yourself, your ideas about yourself, attitudes about yourself. And of course, even with mental illnesses and addictions and things, how ideas and thoughts and treatments have changed, and as knowledge has learned. It was true of anything. The more you learn, how different it is. And I just think of all the changes that have gone in all those 00:24:00years of nursing. Or medicine. I mean, it's just mind boggling, you know?

LG: Mm hmm. Are there any changes that really stick out to you from like when you were practicing to how we handle things today?

LD: Well I think obviously the biggest thing is the technology with the computers. There's such a difference in how nursing is handled. There's so many more ancillary staff that do a lot of the hands-on kind of thing. And I'm saying that not only from my professional perspective, but from a personal when I was a patient last September. And just being in the hospital. You see the CNAs that are doing a lot more of the personal things. And CNAs now do temperatures and 00:25:00they do blood pressures and they do all these things which they didn't do. So, yeah, there's been a lot of changes.

Overall, nursing still remains the same. The focus on in the patient. You want to give good care. And I've always worked, most of the time my area has been in the operating room. I've had different experiences, but the last place I worked before I retired was at Gundersen in La Crosse in the operating room. and even there, there were such changes about how we admitted the patient to the operating room, how we did, and now, then there got to be more operating room technicians and they got anesthesia techs and all this kind of thing. So, yeah, some of that is really good. Some of that, I think, is not necessarily positive. 00:26:00It's not negative.

As an example, when we gave bed baths, which are not, first of all, there's not that many in-patients anymore. Secondly, they don't give that many regular bed baths on a daily basis. We had a specific way to do a bed bath. And that was the time that you would use for assessment of your patient. Finding out a lot about not only the patient, but the family, other dynamics. So you learned a lot just from that. You know, of course then you went back and charted everything by hand. But it was good. I mean, I just learned a lot from that.

LG: I'm trying to loop back around to what I was going to say. There was one thing I had a question about, but now I can't remember. Hmm. Let me see if I have it written down somewhere. No. That's fine. (laughs) So, I guess what were 00:27:00some of your lasting impressions of being a student nurse at Madison?

00:27:10

LD: Oh, there was wonderful times with the classmates, just bonding times. There were some very sad times. There were some scary times. I remember (laughs) different instructors had different impressions. I remember when we were on our obstetrics rotation, which was here in Madison General, we had an instructor who was just very precise about everything. And your uniform had to be just exactly right, and your shoes had to be polished and your shoelaces had to be clean and all this. I remember at one point, she made one of the student nurses when she was working in the nursery go and wash her shoelaces and put them back in wet because they weren't white enough. I mean, this was really an expectation. You 00:28:00had to do this.

I remember probably one of my first deaths was a 15 year-old boy that died from a kidney problem, which he probably would not today. He would have had a transplant now. And that was a reality. He's not that much younger than I was at that point. And death was for older people. And here was this young man.

I remember when I was on the OB affiliation, having a young mother and her husband coming in in early labor. And they stopped the labor. And she came back two months later and I was assigned to her again. And I was still there because it was a three-month rotation. And she delivered the baby. And it was a lot of congenital deformities. And I spent a lot of time caring for her and her 00:29:00husband. And actually formed probably a deeper bond than you normally would. And probably like a month after she went, and the baby died probably third or fourth day. And at that time, mothers stayed in the hospital about five days. So I got to know them fairly well. And about a month later, they invited me and my, he was my boyfriend then, he's my husband now, to their place for dinner to say thank you for the care they had gotten. I mean, it was a very meaningful thing. Because yeah, she was a patient, but we had established a good bond.

There were so, so many good experiences. So many good experiences. And we did so many fun things in the dorm. We did not very nice things to one another. 00:30:00(laughs) Just had a really, just a fun time, sharing time. Very supportive of one another. You know, if there's personal issues. Classroom issues, helping each other study. Commiserating over the way people were treated sometimes. It was my first experience with someone who'd grown up on the east coast. We had an instructor who was from the east coast who spoke differently. In the Midwest, we don't pronounce things the same. And their As, they pronounced with an "er" at the end. I had trouble understanding her in class sometimes because (laughs) I didn't know what she was saying. Just lots of small things, you know. When we get together, we start reminiscing and one thing leads to another.

LG: And were there any traditions or like ceremonies that you remember at all?

00:31:05

LD: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. There certainly were. We wore nursing caps then. We were very proud of our caps. And as a freshman, you got your cap, but it was plain white. In your second year, you got one narrow stripe. Black stripe. In the third year, you would get two narrow stripes. And when you graduate, you got one broad black velvet stripe. And I still have my cap. That meant a lot. You worked very hard to get that. You had to meet certain criteria. So, yeah, that meant a lot.

I'd forgotten till we were talking about, now we'd have, in the lounge, here in McConnell Hall, which is now also all offices, we'd have these teas. And people would get dressed up. And there was this silver tea service. And they'd have the table set up at the end. Because part of this is we were expected and being 00:32:00taught to be ladies. You know, this is over fifty years ago. This is all important. And enjoyable times. Very enjoyable for everybody to be dressed up and be in their best and talk and visit. And the instructors would be there. Sometimes some of the doctors would come over.

LG: What were the relationships like between especially student nurses and physicians during that time?

LD: Oh, it's probably quite different than it is now. The doctor was very much the captain of the ship, so to speak. It was the days when the doctor came to make rounds, the nurse would collect all the charts for him and stand up when he came to the nurses' station. And you'd always call him Dr. So and So, and he'd always call you Miss So and So. He never, ever used first names. You waited till they spoke to you. You didn't question orders. You were supposed to know and be 00:33:00able to interpret things. It was much different than it is now. Because over the years as I've worked, and all the years I worked at Gundersen, it was very much a coworker existence with the physicians. We're a team. Not that we weren't a team, but it was different. The doctor was still always the one that was in charge. Much more so. And that's certainly changed.

LG: So is there anything else that you wanted to add about kind of your student nurse education before we talk more about like your post-grad life?

LD: Oh, I think it was a wonderful education. I think it was wonderful in every way. Academically, I think it was planned out very well. And then as far as the clinical aspect of it, that was also planned out very well. And I think it's certainly helped prepare me for my future years, career, different things that I did. I always felt like I was a learner, a life-long learner. I didn't come off 00:34:00feeling that I knew everything, because we didn't, by any means. But I felt like the expectation was there, if you didn't know, you were responsible to find out. You didn't want to do any harm. You always were to help.

LG: Right. So tell me just a little bit about life after you graduated from Madison.

00:34:31

LD: Well, I got married right away and worked. My husband is a student at UW and I worked at, it was Madison General at the time. I worked in the operating room. And had a couple of children while working there. Continued to work there. And then we moved from Madison to Connecticut. And I did volunteer work in Connecticut. I did not do nursing. And then we moved back to Middleton. And then 00:35:00I continued working at Madison General. And then we moved to Illinois and I worked at Napierville, in the operating room. That was my first love. I really enjoyed that. I believe we had more patient contact then than the nurses do now. We did pre-op visits, so we knew our patients before they came into surgery. And we'd be with them during surgery. We'd make post-op visits. Time was a luxury we had then to do some of that. There wasn't the emphasis on time and efficiency and money.

LG: Right.

LD: As much as now. And then we moved back to the area where we live now near Westby. And I started working at Gundersen, La Crosse, was there almost thirty years in the OR.

LG: So what was it like transitioning from being a student to being a professional nurse?

LD: It was scary. One of the areas that I worked at, I was working in the OR but 00:36:00I'd fill in sometimes on weekends and I'd work on a floor. And I worked some at nights. I remember working on an orthopedic floor and I was the only nurse. I had one aide and we had 33 patients. This was very early on in my career. And you're responsible. And you're making all of these decisions. And it's kind of scary and kind of overwhelming. And you really learn to grow up in a hurry.

And one of the times I was working there, I was working PMs at that particular time. And experienced my first cardiac arrest. And first time doing CPR. And that's when CPR was not widely done or widely taught. And I remember I was 00:37:00working with one of my classmates. And after this was all said and done and she said, "How did you know how to do that? That was pretty amazing."

And I said, "Well, I just remember what we'd been taught."

She said, "I didn't remember anything." (laughs) Well, sometimes I didn't, either. But it was very different. It was like, this is a lot of responsibility. I'm responsible for these people. And if they asked you questions, you wanted to make sure you had the right answer. You know? And you very quickly learned to say, you know, I can't really answer that for sure, but I'll find out and get back to you. I did that a lot. A lot. (laughs)

LG: And did you feel any difference between like your generation of graduating nurses and kind of the older generations of nurses, just like mixing in the hospitals? Or was everyone kind of on the same page?

00:37:52

LD: Kind of on the same page, except the younger nurses, you had to prove kind of that you knew what you were doing. You were expected to. You were expected 00:38:00to. You didn't really say a whole lot. You did your assignment. But it didn't take very long till you were just part of every, you know, and you expected to do as much as everyone else. And you expected to work hard. You didn't expect any favors. You knew you were going to have some awful hours, and you knew you were going to get really tired. You knew you were going to work holidays. Because the newer people, low man on the totem pole. You always got the worst hours and the most holidays. And you knew that. I mean, that's just the way it was. But very quickly, you all just got to be part of the same.

LG: So was there any advice or words of wisdom that you would give nursing students who are graduating now or in the future?

LD: What I would always say to any of them is that your learning is just starting. Don't feel like you really know it all. Because you don't. It's 00:39:00changing so quickly. Now, even more so than in the past. I'd also say don't let technology take you away from your patient-centered approach. Keep that in mind. I guess I'm showing my age there, too. But all the years that I worked, I did see some changes. Not only with the nurses, but with CNAs and with technicians. And this is part of how they grew up in high school. One of the things is that there wasn't, the work ethic was a little bit different. Again, this is what they grew up as far as learning. Yeah, you're entitled to your breaks, so many breaks for so long. We didn't have breaks. (laughs) You know, like you'd get 00:40:00lunch between cases or something. Not that that was right, but I'm just saying that that was a difference. And so when things improved so that you got your breaks and all this and that, you appreciated it. You weren't so concerned with making sure that you got what you felt you were--and this isn't true, certainly of everyone. And I think sometimes the expectations of the new graduate nurses, the reality is not what they're expecting it to be. And I don't think that that's just necessarily nursing. I think that's a lot of, just a lot of fields. But just, I would tell them just to be patient, and to be willing to listen to others. Learn from their experiences. And there's no better profession. I've 00:41:00never been sorry that I went into nursing. It's the best ever. Yeah.

And I've worked in different areas. I worked for the school of nursing, I worked in the floor. I worked in a clinic setting. The majority of years, when you look at all the years, have been in the operating room. I did preceptor work in the operating room, which is like staff education. Just had a lot of really good experiences. Everything is just always changing and learning and, yeah. Good. Just good stuff.

LG: And is there anything else that you'd want to include in this before we conclude this portion of the interview?

LD: I guess I can't, I think I just said it, that I was really glad that I was a nurse. I was very proud of our profession. I've seen, what I have seen is the way the nursing profession is viewed from when I started in nursing to where it 00:42:00is now. And I just read again not too long ago, and this is like the third year in a row I've read this, that nurses have the most credibility and the most respect of all these different positions. Which I would hope would be true, but it's still really good to have that verification. I've seen how it's, nursing profession has so expanded. They're so much more autonomous, which is good, than they used to be. I guess all my years of experience have helped me, certainly, being able to make some of these decisions. Yeah, well I'm retired from the operating room. I do parish nursing. So I didn't myself in a position of being a resource person, giving advice helping direct a little different way. So, 00:43:00anything else that you can think of? (laughter) I can just go on forever. I'm very proud to say that I'm a nurse. I think it's a wonderful profession. I think that it's highly respected. And I would hope that it will continue in that way and that we'll always be able to keep our focus on patient-centered, patient care, even with all the other, the reason we're nurses is that we have patients to care for.

LG: Well, perfect. Well thank you so much for your time. And just so it's on the record, I'm going to send you in the mail, there's like a release form that has different options of like where and when this interview will get released. And if I go back through and find there's more that I need elaboration on, I'll get in contact with you.

LD: Okay.

00:43:50

[pause]

Second Interview Session (2019): Digital File

LG: So today is July 23rd. My name is Lea Goldstone and I'm interviewing Linda Dowling. This is a follow-up phone interview, and being conducted for the Madison General School of Nursing Alumni Oral History Project from 1905 to 1982. 00:44:00So Linda, could you please clarify your date of birth and which years you attended Madison General?

LD: Yes. Date of birth is June 15, 1940. And I attended Madison General from, I believe we started in August of 1958. And I graduated in August of 1961. So a three-year, year-round program.

LG: So you mentioned that you'd been a nurse's aide prior to attending Madison General. Could you just tell me a little bit more about that program?

LD: I was, this is in the days when CNA certification was not required before nursing school. I worked as, it was a nurse's aide, it was not a CNA, worked as a nurse's aide at Vernon Memorial Hospital, in Viroqua, Wisconsin. And we were trained by partnering or working with another aide for one to two weeks, 00:45:00depending on what our assignments were. And it was a small town hospital, so the nurses' aides provided all the nursing care, and actually did many of the treatments, of dressing changes and caths, catheter changes and things like that. So it was quite a lead-in to my nursing experience. And what was interesting is once I got into nursing school, I learned the theory behind so many of the things that I had been taught to do as a nurse's aide and didn't fully comprehend. The ramifications and the overall impact of the procedure. So as I said, we did primarily all the nursing care as an aide.

LG: So would you say that that experience did really help your education at 00:46:00Madison General?

LD: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I certainly knew what to expect. Not completely, certainly, but I had a good feeling as to what nursing was. I came out of it feeling that I'd really wanted to continue doing nursing care. I didn't want to be in a position where I was primarily supervisory, which is what the hospital was at that time, that's no longer the case.

LG: So, and you mentioned in your last interview as well that while you were a student at Madison General that there were supervisors with you in the hospitals that you were working in. (clears throat) Excuse me. Sorry. Could you describe like the duties of these supervisors and like what your experiences were with them?

00:46:58

LD: Oh, yeah. They were our instructors. And they usually, if I remember 00:47:00correctly, would have like four to six students working on the unit. And they would give us our patient--because at that time, there were a lot more in-patients that were also in there for a longer period of time. So they would make the assignments like the day before, give us the information on these patients. We were expected to research and get information on the conditions for whatever they might be hospitalized for. Then they would meet with us the morning that we came onto the unit. They would check on us frequently during our time, the hours that we were there. They would look at our charting procedures, how we did other procedures. They would certainly make sure if it was a new situation that they were with us. They were very helpful. They did not micromanage by any means. But while we always felt like we had a resource person there.

LG: And do you remember any instances where maybe you needed like the help of a supervisor and they kind of came to help you out?

LD: Oh, yeah. I remember, I can't think of anything right specific now, but I know there were many times when I would have questions about something specific and I would ask, and they were always, always very willing to help. And sometimes it would be a staff nurse that would be the helpful person. Maybe referred there by the instructor, or the instructor had gone to another unit, and so we were to get the help from the staff nurse.

But we always, I'm trying to think if I can think of anything specific. I guess, this is not a physical thing, but I remember on a medical unit we had an elderly 00:49:00female patient who was very difficult to deal with, was very angry about a lot of things and didn't like many situations. And I remember speaking with my instructor on how to deal with this particular patient.

And I remember also, this is a very sad situation, of a young man who was diagnosed with a terminal illness with a life expectancy of two weeks. And we talked about how you relate to someone when they're facing that situation. So that's kind of from one extreme to the other. But there were many times as we went along when I had specific questions. Even about how I would phrase something when I was charting it. Because that was pre-computer charting, and you wrote everything in longhand. And you had to be concise, use the appropriate terms. And so I would get help on that.

LG: And so--Oh, sorry, continue.

LD: They encouraged us to be independent. And when we'd go to them for a resource, with questions, as I remember, the method of answering or dealing with that was to help us find our own answers, guide us through to find our own answers, rather than just telling you, "This is how you do this."

LG: That's great. So as for the staff nurses, so what was your (clearing throat) oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. What was your relationship like with them as a student nurse to like just a normal staff nurse? Like how did that work in the hospitals?

00:50:53

LD: I think it worked very well. They looked at us as students, of course. They were for the most part experienced and professional. They were always available 00:51:00to help us. They expected us to do our jobs. They didn't handhold us. They didn't do a lot of mollycoddling. They expected us to function as a nurse. If we were on the unit, we were to function as a nurse. But they were always supportive. It was always obvious that they were the nurse and we were the students, however. But I just learned an awful lot from just even observing how they dealt with patients, how they did things. So I felt overall we had a pretty good relationship with the staff nurses. They liked having students there. Having a student environment encourages learning because the students are always asking and learning, so that encourages the staff to do the same thing. Which is 00:52:00why I've always liked working in a teaching hospital, because it's always a learning environment.

LG: And how did patients react to having student nurses around?

LD: Oh, they loved the student nurses. They loved the young nurses, the young people. They always wanted to talk to us more. And I think much as now, especially the elderly patients really appreciated the young student nurses. And the ped units, the teens, middle school ages, they all liked, we always were very warmly received.

LG: Great. So you mentioned, too, that there were high expectations for nursing students in your class. Was there any kind of assistance for students available if they were struggling in their classes?

LD: Well, yeah. You could always, you were expected, if you needed the help, you were expected to seek it out on yourself, by yourself. You were also expected to 00:53:00work and study. And if you needed to study longer periods of time, you were expected to be mature enough to realize that and spend that time. If you had trouble or any difficulty understanding things, you could always ask to meet with an instructor. And as I mentioned previously, the first year we took the majority of our academic courses at UW Madison. And of course there you always had a teaching assistant that could help you out.

I think the big thing is that we just, we had a very heavy course load in addition to the clinical work. The hours of clinical work increased the longer 00:54:00we were there in school, of course. But there were high expectations, both of clinical work and the academic work. But there were always resources to help you.

LG: And so kind of on the same note for your professional career, while you were working as a professional nurse, were there any new subjects or technologies that you had to kind of pick up while you were working?

LD: Uh, I don't follow what you're asking. Ask that again, please.

LG: So like as a nurse, if there were new technologies or even just new like medications or diseases or anything that came up in your professional career, was there any of that that you had to manage learning kind of on the clock?

00:54:48

LD: Oh, yeah. As a nurse, we were always learning. Whether it was formal, in-service classes or you know, just in conversation, teaching one-to-one as 00:55:00you're doing something. But it was a continual learning process. Things are always evolving, changing, being discovered or being more refined. Yeah, it's a continual learning process.

LG: Yeah, and you mentioned in-service classes. What are those?

LD: Well, in-service classes would be like I guess the easiest way to explain it, in the latter years when I was working of course was when technology was coming into the hospital. And there would be classes during the day. And you would be assigned to attend this class maybe for an hour, maybe for a day, whatever you were expected to attend that class so that you were brought up to date on what you needed to do. Another example would be CPR. We had to be regularly certified in CPR. You were expected to attend the class, and then also 00:56:00to do the demonstration, return demonstration on that. In-service were essentially on-the-job classes. Most of the time, there was time provided during the workday for you to attend any particular type of update or learning needed for your specialty. Not always. Sometimes they were on off days or after hours. But in-service traditionally was held during your working hours.

LG: Thank you for the clarification. So do you remember any world events that occurred while you were a student at Madison General?

LD: Any world events?

LG: Yeah. Kind of just anything big that happened that you remember kind of just happening outside of your education. Like in the news.

LD: Hmm. That's (laughs) That makes me think a little bit. It's been a very long time ago. You know, just off the top of my head, I can't even think of anything politically or government. I just can't think of anything.

LG: Oh, that's totally fine. I understand that it was quite a while ago. I just like to ask.

LD: I just can't think of anything. You know, I think of more recent things. But I can't think of, not during my nursing time. Or during my student days. And of course we were very tied in with UW Madison. Academically, but also socially. We attended events, many of us dated other students and we attended parties and things like that in Madison.

LG: So, is there anything in general that you wish more people knew about the 00:58:00nursing profession?

00:58:09

LD: Well, I can't answer that real honestly, because I don't know exactly what people do know about nursing. But I think in this day now as a nurse now, it's a highly skilled, knowledgeable profession that requires not only the old, or what it's always been with nurses, they have to care about people, they have to be sensitive, have to be caring, willing to give, willing to listen. They also need to be astute from the technology standpoint. They need to understand a lot of chemistry kinds of things. Nurses are much more widely educated in many areas 00:59:00than people realize. This is not taking care of a sick person. You have to know about their condition, their treatment. The nurse is the advocate, always, for the patient. The nurse is responsible for communicating to the physician things that she or he might observe. Because they're the ones that spend the time with the patient. Whether it's in the clinical setting, in an office or in a hospital or wherever it might be, I think nursing needs to be recognized as a very highly-skilled profession.

LG: Well, great. Is there anything else that you can think of that you'd want preserved about your experience with Madison General?

LD: Hmm. Well, I think it probably, I already said this, but overall, it was a wonderful experience. It had many ups and downs, as always, as students. I came 01:00:00out feeling like I was ready to become a nurse, but I was just beginning to learn. I had a lot more to learn. But I was anxious to become a part of the healthcare profession. I felt basically prepared. But realized I needed to be open to continual learning. And I would say that that's true of a lot of nurses. I don't know, now here my age is showing. (laughs) I don't know if that's true as much now as it was years ago. I think that the students by and large now are much more academically prepared because being required for the most part to have a BSN. But I'm not so sure about some of the other attributes that we came away 01:01:00from the school with. But I was wanting very much to become and feel a part of the profession. Not just working towards it or being on the outside.

01:01:23

[End Interview.]