Interview with Eleanor Wright

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

ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1845

WRIGHT, ELEANOR

WRIGHT, ELEANOR (1944-)

Interviewed: 2019

Interviewer: Lea Goldstone

Index by: Lea Goldstone, Sophie Clark

Transcribed by: Teresa Bergen

Length: 51 minutes

First Interview Session (February 6, 2019): Digital File

00:00:00

LG: There we go. All right. So today is February 6, 2019. My name is Lea Goldstone. And I'm interviewing Eleanor Wright. This is a phone interview. And this is being conducted for the Madison General School of Nursing Alumni Oral History Project, from 1905 to 1982. For sound quality purposes, could you please say your name and spell your last name?

EW: My name is Eleanor Cooper Wright. W-r-i-g-h-t.

LG: All right. Perfect. So for your background, describe your upbringing.

EW: I grew up in Santa Barbara, California. My father had been a University of Wisconsin professor of botany. Moved out there, moved to Santa Barbara in 1950. 00:01:00Let's see. Grew up through the public school system. And did the usual things growing up. Girl Scouts, camping, etcetera. And went to the junior college in Santa Barbara before attending Madison General.

LG: Did anything in your background guide you towards your nursing education?

EW: No. I always wanted to be a nurse since the time I was a small child.

LG: And was nursing popular in your community? Or was that just kind of a personal goal?

EW: No, my best friend from grammar school, she went on to be a nurse, also.

LG: And what was your perception of like the nursing career prior to your actually being a part of it?

EW: I think just being able to help people and be able to have a profession of 00:02:00which I could kind of travel and go anywhere and work anywhere and there would always be a job available.

LG: All right. And then what years did you attend nursing school?

EW: I went to Madison General, I started there in 1964 and graduated 1966.

LG: And what were your first impressions of Madison?

EW: I was born in Madison. Had been there as a small child around age four. So I remembered some parts of Madison. But it was a bigger city than what I had grown up in. It was pretty. It had lakes. Lots of water around there. It was different than the area that I, I grew up in southern California so I was used to beaches 00:03:00and mountains. And everything there was pretty much flat.

LG: And how large was your class size?

EW: I don't really remember. I know we had, we started with like forty-something and ended with thirty-something, I think.

LG: And did you all live in the dorms?

EW: Yes. We all lived, except one student who was married and had five children. She lived at home.

00:03:37

LG: And so just describe your experiences in the dorms.

EW: I had never lived in a dorm before and never really been away from home, other than just to camp. And when I arrived, they figured since I came from a far distance they'd put me with a roommate. And I remember my first summer, 00:04:00starting there in June, not used to thunderstorms that you get in the Midwest. They put me in a room with another gal at a corner room that had two windows. And I remember in the middle of the night with this horrible thunderstorm and lightning, thinking that I was going to be annihilated with the lightning coming through the windows. Buried myself under covers. Called out to my roommate, who slept through the whole night. I got no sleep that night. And she said, "Oh, this happens all the time. Don't worry about it. Just go to sleep." So after that, I was okay. (laughs)

But it was different. And it was kind of fun, because you had lots of other gals from all over. Most of them from Wisconsin. But there were other gals. One from Tennessee and one from Illinois. There were a few other ones. Most of them were from Wisconsin. But you always had someone to go places with, do things with, 00:05:00study with. So it was fun living in the dorm. And the house mothers were great.

LG: And just for clarification, was that in McConnell Hall? Or did you live in a different dorm?

EW: No. McConnell Hall.

LG: So what were some of the like social or recreational activities you and your friends did while you were living in Madison?

EW: We used to go to the Snack Shack, which was a local bar, eatery. Down just about two blocks away. And we used to head down there on Friday and Saturday nights for our 3.2 beer and a hamburger. And that was the only place that was close by. There were no grocery stores nearby or any other place to go, unless we walked uptown, up to the square. Then we would find things up on University 00:06:00Avenue. But there was nothing down in the area where we were.

We would oftentimes go over to Vilas Park. I took, I had one class I had to take. I was lacking biology. And I could have taken it at the university. And I think it was an eight-week class, six, eight or twelve-week class. But I took the same class at Edgewood College of the Sacred Heart. So I borrowed my senior partner's bicycle and I would ride to class every day during the summer, which was nice. But everything was pretty much in walking distance of the dorm. You could walk uptown. You could walk to the park. So that was nice.

LG: And would you say that the girls or men who were living in the dorms were relatively close?

00:06:57

EW: Yes, I think so. Most of us have stayed in touch over the years. I think in 00:07:00my class alone, I think we've only lost one classmate in all these years.

LG: So what was kind of life just like living in Madison while you were there?

EW: I had, there were some family friends. My father's, my brother's godfather lived there. He was a local dentist. So I would see them occasionally. And another friend that worked, a couple of other professors that worked with my father years before, I would see them occasionally. It was a nice town to live in. Lots to do.

LG: And is there anything else that you would want to describe about just living in Madison during that time?

EW: Not that I can think of right off.

LG: All right. So moving into your training, can you describe some of the technical training that you learned while you were at school?

EW: What do you mean by technical?

LG: Just some of like the methods or skills like that you learned while you were in class, if you can think of anything.

EW: Yes. We would work in the hospital part of the day, and then we would have classes the other parts of the day. Each thing that we were, everything that we learned, we would either learn it in a book and then we would have classes to actually learn how to do the different procedures. So we would, and we had like 00:09:00in-service training. But then we would also train with the patients. We would see the instructor do like a catheterization. And then the next patient that came up that needed that, then we would do the procedure on each thing that we learned so that you had hands-on, which was excellent. And we would learn, like for our IVs, to learn to start an IV, we did our training through, in the recovery room. So people were not really awake when we were putting an IV in. So it was a great way to learn to do that and get your skill without having the patient awake and looking at you and making you nervous. And because of that, I could start an IV on anyone at anytime, anywhere in the hospital. And when I left years later and worked in an emergency room, I would get called up on the 00:10:00floors to be able to put IVs in. Where other people couldn't get in, I could get into any of them. So I think our skill level of what we learned in the diploma School of Nursing was excellent. And far exceeds what I've seen coming out of the two-year programs that they have now.

00:10:25

LG: Do you remember any faculty who played an important role in your education?

EW: I think, yeah, there were several. Mrs. Bassett, she was my counselor. And she was always very good going over things. We had, I can't think of any of the ones, there were a couple that were a little, not the best instructors. But the majority of all of our instructors, Mrs. Green, she was in, I think she was my 00:11:00surgical. McArdle was surgical. Green, I think, was OB. Most of them were, and Miss Rudy was orthopedics. We had excellent instructors.

LG: And were there any particularly challenging aspects of your education?

EW: I think for me, reading and then figuring things out was always kind of difficult for me. I think as I got older I discovered I was probably somewhat dyslexic. But back then, people didn't realize that. So the reading and trying to figure something out was harder. But by having everything shown to us, it made it very easy to look at, see how the procedure went, and then follow it. So 00:12:00I think nursing was a good field for me to have gone into.

LG: And kind of more on that point, were there any resources available to nursing students outside of class which would help the students succeed?

EW: Not that I remember at that time. But our instructors were always available. If we had any problems with anything, there was always an instructor that would sit down with you and help you.

LG: So can you give me some examples of like what kind of classes you had while you were there?

EW: We had every type of nursing that there was. We had, we took all of our, before we went to Madison General, we had a year of college prior to that where we took all of our basic anatomy, physiology, psych, soc, chemistry, English, 00:13:00all the stuff that was required. And then when we got to Madison General, we did just, I had the biology class. But other than that, we did everything that was just to nursing. We did our med surg. And we would go from, we took some there at Madison General and then we rotated out. We did a month of TB nursing at the VA hospital. We were at Mendota State for three months, and three months at Milwaukee Children's. So we would do our, pediatrics were done in Milwaukee. Our OB/GYN was done at Madison General. And our psych nursing was out at Mendota.

LG: And for that program in Milwaukee, did they provide you with transportation there? Or did they just expect you to get there?

EW: They just expected you to get there. I went with my long-time friend, who 00:14:00lives in Seattle, who I still see. Her family was from the Milwaukee area. So her parents took me down with her. And we were down there for like three months. And then if I wanted to come home, I would either take the bus, or a friend would come down and pick me up. But we stayed in a dorm there. And it was one that had the underground tunnel that you would walk to the hospital. And it was quite the eye-opener because it was a seven-floor pediatric hospital. And on the nightshift, there was only one nursing supervisor and one nurse in the intensive care infant surgical unit. Otherwise, the entire hospital was staffed by student nurses.

LG: And was it a fully functioning hospital? Or was it more just for training?

00:15:05

EW: No. It was fully functioning pediatric hospital.

LG: And as for the other kind of branches of nursing, did you have any in particular that you identified with most strongly?

EW: The ones that I had, the ones that I was interested in going into were pediatric nursing and operating room. I didn't end up in either. (laughter)

LG: What did you end up in?

EW: I started out in orthopedic nursing. When I graduated, I worked at Madison General on a three to eleven shift in orthopedics for a couple of years. And then I left and went out to California for a year, and I worked in, nights on a medical floor. And then returned to Madison General, working back in orthopedics 00:16:00again. And then went to work for Doctors Miller, Wickson and [Hayden?] in an office setting for a couple of years before returning to California. And there, I worked in an office, but then the hospital I'd worked at when I was out there prior needed someone to cover their emergency room. And that was one thing that was lacking in training at Madison General. We did have emergency room for one day, just to observe. So it was not something I was familiar with. But I ended up working my day job in the clinic. And then I would work Friday and Saturday and Sunday nights on three to eleven in the emergency room at a county hospital for about a month. And then I just decided to stay with the county hospital and 00:17:00worked in their ER. And became head nurse in that particular ER. So my choices of what I was going to do, which was pediatrics, or operating room, never seemed to come along. And I'd also planned to be a navy nurse, and I didn't get there, either.

LG: Are there any practices or methods that you learned which you think would be considered unusual today?

EW: Now nursing is so unusual nowadays. I mean, it's so different from what we did. The surgeries are all done differently. People don't stay in the hospital unless they're really ill. Most surgeries are done out-patient. You know, in one day, in and out. Some of the ones that I've seen that are really different are 00:18:00like cataract surgeries. When I was in training, a cataract patient would be on bed rest with sandbags on either side of their head, not able to turn, for about a week. And I just had my cataract done last year, and I was in and out and home. So there have been many changes since the time that I trained.

LG: Are there any other aspects of your training that you would want someone in the future to know about, like your time there?

EW: I think that one of the best features of training through a diploma school was that we had hands-on training. We worked every shift there was. We worked day shift, three to eleven and eleven to seven. All three shifts are entirely 00:19:00different for the type of care that you give and what goes on on each shift. So many of the gals that I saw that came from the four-year and from the two-year would only come for a short period of time. They'd work a couple of hours, they'd go home. They never--we'd pick up the slack on what they didn't finish on their patients. I just think the diploma school gave an excellent overall of nursing, and you were ready for any situation that came up. I'm sad that they no longer have them.

LG: Well moving on to your life after Madison, you kind of described a little bit already. But can you tell me more about your career in nursing once you graduated?

00:19:57

EW: Yes. When I graduated, as I had said, I worked at Madison General for a 00:20:00short period of time. And then did some office nursing there. Then I came back to California. I worked the emergency room in a county hospital. And at that time, I also, it was the beginning of the EMTs and the paramedics. And I also became an EMT and worked ambulance on my off hours. And helped train the first paramedics of Santa Barbara County. And the hospital I was at was being taken over by a private hospital, and they were closing all but the clinic. So I chose to move on to another hospital. And I became head nurse in the emergency room at a Catholic hospital at Saint Francis in Santa Barbara. Worked there for several years. And then went on to work with hand surgeons for a few years at a walk-in 00:21:00clinic, and with some other doctors before I retired.

LG: So how long in total did you work as a nurse?

EW: I worked from 1966 when I graduated until about 1989.

LG: And what were some challenges that you faced in your career?

EW: Dealing with doctors was one challenge. The county hospital where I worked was a training hospital. So we had interns and residents. And not all of them would pay attention to rules. So it was, that could be challenging to maintain 00:22:00your license and try to keep them from being sued, also.

LG: Can you describe more of the circumstances kind of surrounding that? Just to clarify? Just what do you mean by like that situation?

EW: I had one case where the doctor was ordering an excessive amount of valium to an emaciated alcoholic patient. And I refused to give it. And had to call supervisors down for that, because he was demanding to have it given. Other one, wanting, with plastic surgeons, young interns who wanted to shave off eyebrows and other things that don't necessarily grow back. That we'd question and then they would call the attending and find out that I was correct, they were not to 00:23:00do the procedure or whatever had been asked of me to do.

LG: And who has like authority in those situations? Like who can kind of put the final foot down?

EW: Their attending.

LG: Got you.

EW: Because they're an intern or a resident. So the attending physician can be the one that tells them that they cannot do that.

LG: Were there any situations in which it went the other way? Where you couldn't get a handle on what you felt was the right solution to a problem?

EW: No. Never got to that.

LG: And tell me about some of the more memorable moments of your career.

00:23:53

EW: Well, some of the memorable moments were kind of the, working at a county hospital, for one, was different from normal hospitals. Because you get, we had 00:24:00the only locked psych unit in the entire county of over 40,000 people. So other towns would bring their psych patients down to us. Most of it is you had to have a good sense of humor. Because if you didn't, it could be quite sad and quite upsetting. We got Santa Claus brought into the ER one night. One afternoon, I guess. He had been, he was the Santa Clause for JC Penney's and he was drunk and carrying on. And we heard jingle bells coming. And I joked about Santa coming. And sure enough, there he was. He had some psych issues and stuff and was admitted to the psych unit.

And during that period of time in the '60s was when the hallucinogenic drugs 00:25:00were popular, and a lot of the barbiturates that were used to get high. So we had a lot of our people that would come into the emergency were high on different drugs. So that was pretty challenging during that period of time. Now they have the opioid crisis and that. But we had people that ate jimson weed and would be dehydrated, and ones that had had LSD. So it was a wide variety of what we had come in. So that was challenging. Between that, alcoholics and people that just didn't have the quality of life because of their situation.

LG: Did you have any particularly fulfilling moments that you can remember?

EW: I think any of the, yeah, the moments where someone was critical that we were able to maintain their life and maintain them having a livable life.

LG: All right. And did you ever return to Madison?

EW: Just for visits.

LG: Did you go to any of the reunions? Or was it mostly just for your own--

EW: No, we had a couple of, I think we had two or three reunions that we had that we set up. We had one not too many years out. And then we had one when we 00:27:00were out about twenty-some odd years. And then this May some of us are going to attend a luncheon that they have every year.

LG: And how did you mostly keep in contact with your friends? Was it just phone calls or letters?

EW: Yeah. Before the internet, because we were well before the internet, yeah, it was mainly phone calls or letters.

LG: And what advice would you give to future nursing students?

00:27:41

EW: To pay attention and to learn all you can learn.

LG: And is there anything else that you would like future interested parties for this interview to know about your life and your career?

EW: I think it was a fulfilling career. I don't know whether I would go into it again, as I've seen how healthcare has developed over the years. One of the main reasons I went into healthcare, into nursing, was to be able to have interaction with the patients. And as I see now how it's evolved, nursing has become more paperwork, computer-oriented, and less hands-on.

LG: All right. Is there anything else that you can think of that you'd like to add before I conclude this interview?

EW: I think Madison General gave young men and women an excellent opportunity to 00:29:00become nurses and to reach their goals. And gave excellent training, the physicians and the nursing staff, and our instructors, were all excellent.

LG: Great. Well, and anything else that you can think of? (laughs) Just making sure.

EW: Not that I can think of. Unless there's something else you want to ask.

LG: I think I hit all of the checkmarks. So I will conclude this interview for now. We will be contacting you again for a follow-up interview within the next couple of days. So just in case we missed anything or if there's any more questions that I can come up with. But otherwise, I really appreciate you taking 00:30:00the time out of your day to let me talk and ask you questions. And I hope you have a wonderful afternoon.

EW: Okay. You, too. Stay warm back there.

LG: Thank you. Bye bye.

00:30:14

End First Interview Session

Begin Second Interview Session (June 14, 2019): Digital File

00:00:00

LG: Today is June fourteenth. My name is Lea Goldstone and I'm interviewing Eleanor Wright. This is a follow-up phone interview being conducted for the Madison General School of Nursing Alumni Oral History Project, 1905 to 1982. So could you please clarify your birthdate and what years you attended Madison General as a student?

EW: Birthdate is December 15, 1944. And I went to Madison General from 1964 through '66. Graduated in '66.

LG: Great. Okay. So in that original interview, you said you moved from California to Wisconsin, right?

EW: Yeah. My home was in, I was living in California. I grew up in California, in Santa Barbara. And came back to Madison for nursing school.

LG: Got you. Did you feel like there was any cultural difference between California and Wisconsin when you moved?

EW: Much slower pace of life. And no mountains. (laughs) No ocean.

LG: Very true. So you mention in the original interview that you went into nursing partially because there was a measure of job security. Was there a large demand for nurses at the time that you went to school?

EW: I don't think there was a large demand. But it was a profession that you could get a job almost anywhere. And I like to travel, and I wanted something that if I wanted to go somewhere, I had an opportunity to get a job.

LG: Mm hmm. So were you, when you were in school, you kind of thought about moving back out of the state, or just anywhere in the country?

EW: Anywhere in the country, yeah.

LG: And you also mentioned that you took extra classes at Edgewood College. If you can remember, like which classes were those, and why did you take them at Edgewood?

EW: Well, the school at the time, Madison General at the time, it was you did three years. The first year was all done in a college. And then we moved to the dorm in the second year. I had gone to school in Santa Barbara at a local junior college and had taken my prerequisites. But I was lacking one class, which was biology. And I had a choice when I went back there that summer of taking a, I think it was a 12-week class at the University of Wisconsin, or eight weeks at 00:33:00Edgewood, College of the Sacred Heart. Which was, I could ride a bike over to. It was right on Lake Wingra. And so I chose to do the Edgewood College since it was closer and it was shorter by four weeks. But sadly, it was not, the other class at the university would have been much more interesting and probably would have done much better in that class.

LG: Mm hmm. Did you feel that any of that like, I guess lack of information kind of translated into your nursing? Or did you just kind of catch up along the way?

00:03:25

EW: I don't understand the question.

LG: Oh. So like you said that the biology class was kind of just not as interesting and maybe not as like thorough as a class at Wisconsin, like the longer program? Do you feel like--

EW: Oh, the one at Edgewood, the teacher focused just on DNA, which was just 00:34:00coming out at the time.

LG: Oh, got you.

EW: And the entire class was eight weeks was on DNA. Whereas a regular biology class in any other, you know, at the university, would have covered all kinds of things. Would have been much more interesting.

LG: Right. Okay, that makes sense. Okay. And then when discussing like your struggles at school, you said that often you had a hard time reading, which you said might have been like an undiagnosed dyslexia. Were there other learning impediments that like, or any kind of, I guess, disorder that weren't really identifiable while you were in school but like in the modern age have come to be accepted as medical problems?

EW: I think a lot of it was, I think like growing up and through school people 00:35:00had a lot more dyslexia. They might have had other learning issues, things that were not spotted during that period of time that people catch onto now. I mean, before sometimes they would put you in a class, you know, a slower class, that type of thing, growing up, because they didn't understand what, exactly was going on. I think a lot of that is, now people are aware of different learning disorders and problems. Nowadays there's so many autistic people. Growing up, seeing that we didn't have special schools like they--we had special schools when I was growing up. If you had any kind of handicap, there was a school that you went to that was for handicapped children. Where now they're all mainstreamed. So possibly I didn't see children that had disorders like autism.

The first person I ever encountered with autism was out at Mendota State when I did my psych nursing. I never even heard the term before. And there weren't that many back then. Or whether they were there but people didn't understand it. I'm not sure which, what it is. But I think it's a lot more prevalent today than it was back then.

LG: Hmm. That makes sense. Kind of going more to like your education, how much one on one time did students have with their professors?

00:06:20

EW: You had as much as you needed. If you had any questions, they were always around to help you. You also had, we all had an advisor, so that if you had problems with anything, you could go and see, my advisor was one of the 00:37:00instructors. So if there was ever a question, I could always go to them.

LG: And was there just one advisor for everyone? Or was it split up in a certain way?

EW: No, I think each student had a different advisor.

LG: Oh, each, oh. Okay.

EW: Each student might have had, maybe the advisor had ten students or something. And then one of the other teachers that had ten students.

LG: Got you. So in what ways did the nursing profession like as you experienced it changed after like the introduction of computers and different technologies like that?

EW: I left the profession before they really came into computers.

LG: Oh, got you. And when was that?

EW: I went into doing office nursing, and then I basically retired about 1982.

LG: Okay. Got you.

EW: Actually and then I worked, no, actually, it was longer than that. I retired about '89. But I was working in an office. And I did computers in an office for book work and that type of thing. But we weren't, we still would be charting, we weren't doing everything on a computer.

LG: And could you just define what charting is again? Sorry.

EW: Keeping track of the patients. Patient care and medications, etcetera.

LG: Okay. Perfect. Just for clarification. And then my last question is that you mentioned you worked at a Catholic hospital in California at one point in your career. Were there any major differences between a Catholic hospital and like a private or county hospital?

EW: The county hospital, at the time I worked there, there was no, since the county basically picked up the tab, there was no charging of, I mean, everything was the same price type thing. You came in and your rate for the day, say your rate for the day was 50 dollars, or 100 dollars. But that included anything that was done to you for the whole day. That was all your medicines and everything.

In the private sector, you were billed for an aspirin and every piece of gauze. And anything that was done to you.

The Catholic hospital, being run by the head person in the hospital was a nun 00:40:00that ran it, she ran a tight ship, as you would say. But was always out raising money and had her clientele of people. And the thing I found, okay, most irritating, I guess, is when she came down one day to tell me about a person that was coming in. And that she wanted basically that the red carpet was to be rolled out for this person that was coming. And I told her that I treated all people exactly the same. So he would get the same care that the drunk off the street would get. It was kind of offensive for her to have said something like that, I felt.

LG: And when did you move on from that position?

00:10:33

EW: I was there for about two and a half years. And then I went to work for a private hand surgeon.

LG: Oh, got you. Okay. Interesting. Great. Well, those are really all of my 00:41:00fill-in questions. But were there any other details or information that you'd want to get included in the full interview?

EW: Well I thought of a couple of other things. Just random things. Not something particularly on that. One was the fact that when we came back there, my father flew back with me to Madison. And he had gone to the university, and also taught there, in the botany department. Had his PhD. And when he picked me up at the school and we were driving down the street. And there was Schwartz Pharmacy on the corner of Park and Mound. And it's now, I think, located down below in the medical building on Regent, I think it is now. But he stopped and wanted to run in there for a minute. He was in there quite a while. And then he 00:42:00came out and told me that the owner of that particular pharmacy, Sam Schwartz, happened to be one of his classmates from when he went to the university. And he had made arrangements for him that if I needed anything at any time, I was to go to him. And if I needed money or anything, he would handle whatever was needed, because I would be back there by myself.

And the other little thing that was new and unique to our particular class was that when we first went into nursing, you had to wear your hair up above your collar. You were not allowed to wear any jewelry except a gold wedding band. And that was all of the jewelry you could do.

So one night we all decided that perhaps we wanted to pierce our ears. So we lifted some 20 gauge needles from the hospital. We came back with our ice cubes 00:43:00and our bars of soap, and we all pierced our ears. And the next day we showed up at work with all of us with pierced earrings. I had long hair, so I could drape it around my ears. But a lot of my classmates had real short hair. So it wasn't long before everyone in nursing had pierced ears, the nursing supervisors, etcetera. So we kind of changed the dynamics of what you could wear. [unclear]

LG: Oh, sorry. Did your class still wear caps?

EW: Yes.

LG: Okay. Sorry. Continue.

00:13:28

EW: Yeah. We still wore caps. But we wore the uniforms. And we wore white nylons. And all of your underwear had to be white. Except for one of our classmates who unintentionally washed her maroon sweatshirt in with her 00:44:00underwear. And you could see all of, she had pink nylons and pink everything that she had to have. No, we wore the complete outfit. It wasn't until, I would say probably '70s or '80s before people lost their, you know, stopped wearing the caps. But you still wore the uniforms. You wore dressed. You didn't wear any pants. The pants didn't come in till, I would say, mid'-70s. Because I was the first one to start the pantsuit at the county hospital where I worked. Because I worked in the emergency room. And at that time it was about the time when skirts were more mini skirt in length, were above your knees. And working in an emergency room, if you had to climb up on a gurney to resuscitate someone, it was rather awkward trying to hold your skirt down and resuscitate at the same 00:45:00time. So I heard the local uniform shop had pants uniforms. So I went in, looked around and bought one. And figured it was easier for them to forgive me than to ask for, you know, ask for forgiveness rather than ask for permission.

So I just showed up at work one day with a pants uniform. And the director of the hospital came down, walked down, looked at me, told me to turn around, went back down. And from then on, everyone, the nursing supervisors and everybody wore pantsuits after that.

LG: Wow. That's really cool. (laughs) That that was specifically you. That's really awesome.

EW: Because I said, why wear the skirts when you're trying to climb up? On the regular floors, it was one thing. But in the emergency room, you'd be outside trying to drag somebody out of the back of a car or whatever. And it wasn't necessarily the easiest thing to do.

LG: And were there any, I guess, differences? Did you ever move back out of the state to work in a hospital?

EW: Well, I started there. And I worked there till, I graduated in '66. And I worked there till, I think about mid '67 somewhere, the end of '67. And then I was engaged. And I came back to Santa Barbara to work for six months or so to get some extra money before we got married. But unfortunately, he found someone else in that interim. So I did go back and I worked at Madison General in orthopedics again until, oh, '68 or so. Then I worked for Miller, Wickson and [Hayden?], the orthopedic doctors. Then I left again the end of '69, moved back 00:47:00to California and then spent the rest of my time out in California.

LG: Wow. Because I was going to ask, were there any kind of, or did you feel any regional differences between like the kind of cases that you would see at all? Or was it all pretty much the same? Or--

EW: I think your cases are the same. It just depends upon the hospital that you're working at. I mean, the Catholic hospital had a lot more older people, like cardiac conditions and that type of thing. The county hospital had, you had some old people that would come in because we did have a unit that was, since it was the county and the end of the line, and back there there wasn't a lot of nursing home care for people that had no money. So we actually had an entire unit that they called Chronic Disease Unit. And it was basically a nursing home 00:48:00as part of the hospital. But they had, we got more alcoholics. We had the only locked psych ward in the county. So we had psych and we had your alcoholics, and you had, we didn't have any OB. We had a big outpatient clinic that covered everything. But if you were going to deliver a baby, you would end up going to the private hospital.

LG: Oh, got you.

00:18:14

EW: We would do follow-ups and stuff. But we had more just low income. And not a lot of really old people. We had a lot of children and teenagers. And then your alcoholics up till maybe 50 or 60 years of age, where the private sector got--and we also didn't really get auto accidents or anything like that. We didn't get a lot of trauma in the emergency room.

LG: Mm hmm. Interesting. Well, was there anything else that you would want to mention about your experience at Madison General before I kind of complete this process?

EW: It's very sad to me the fact that they did away with the diploma schools. I think they by far taught nurses far more than what they learn nowadays.

LG: Mm hmm. And in what sense do you, in your opinion, do you think that that's true?

EW: Because of the fact that we had hands-on experience. We worked every single shift. And every shift is different. Day shift, and a three to eleven and a night, you encounter different problems on each shift. Most of your two-year grads and your university grads, they only work like the day shift. They go in on the day shift. But they don't get a lot of the stuff that goes on in the 00:50:00other shifts. So I think they lack in experience. What I've heard around the area that I'm in now is that the people that come out of the two-year schools, and I'm not sure about four-year, but possibly the same, is the fact that they're actually either having to do an internship or they are assigned, they work under another nurse for like up to a year. They have to be supervised because they don't have, they don't have the experience that we had. I mean, we were basically, when we were at Milwaukee Children's, that hospital had seven stories of children. And on the night shift, there was one RN supervisor and one RN on the surgical and there were no other, the rest of it was run by students.

LG: Oh, wow. (laughs) That is a lot different.

EW: So we had a lot more responsibility. At that particular, at Milwaukee Children's, we had, when we would go to work, our shift from seven to 3:30 or the evening or night shift, whatever, but we would have three or four patients. The students that came from, I think Marquette went there. Alverno, some of the other, the four-year colleges would come. They came at eight and they left at ten. They had one patient and they didn't finish with him. They had to--we ended up finishing up all their patients. So we had a good hands-on teaching.

LG: Well, great. Well, I appreciate you allowing me to do another follow-up interview. I do appreciate your time a lot. And if you want any of the 00:52:00information or any of the transcripts or anything, feel free to reach back out. I'll be at this phone number, or you can talk to my boss, Troy.

00:21:54

Second Interview Session

Total time = 52 minutes