Learn Practical Nursing at Home in only 10 Short Weeks!
August 14th, 2008
Here’s an ad from the back of The Young Doctors #5.
I can’t imagine that a home study nurse, even one who studies for ten full weeks, would be a very good nurse. On the other hand, this may have been a good way to start for young women who wanted to enter nursing but didn’t have the knowledge or money to attend a regular nursing school. Still, even in the mid-sixties I wouldn’t think that $65 a week ($3380 a year, assuming paid vacations) would put a lot of food on the table (but it would buy over 540 12¢ comic books a week).
Click on the ad for the full-sized version
5 Responses to “ Learn Practical Nursing at Home in only 10 Short Weeks! ”
August 15th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Scott, this is one time that your age is betraying you.
This is an ad for an LPN course, not an RN course. Here’s how the National Federation of Licensed Practical Nurses describes the duties of an LPN now:
“Generally this means providing for the emotional and physical comfort and safety of patients; observing, recording and reporting to appropriate persons, changes in patients’ symptoms and conditions; performing more specialized nursing functions such as administering medications and therapeutic treatments; and assisting with rehabilitation.”
It wasn’t much different then.
LPN’s also worked (and still work) as home health care providers, and in nursing homes, rehab centers, hospitals, and as office nurses in doctor’s offices.
A PN (or LPN or LVN (Licensed Vocational Nurse) ) wasn’t any more likely to decide to become an RN than an RN was likely to decide to become a doctor. And a Practical Nursing degree would be about as much help if you wanted an RN as an RN would be if you wanted an MD — not much. It wasn’t a gateway job, it was an honorable profession in itself.
And $65 dollars a week in 1965 was decent money — not fabulous, but not starvation wages, either.
August 18th, 2008 at 3:42 am
I’ve just returned from Stockholm. In the Moderna Museet, there was a series of collages featuring this exact image repeatedly. According to the background information given, this ad was specifically aimed at Afro-American population, especially at middle-aged women.
Funny that I read about it here .)
August 18th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Young women AND men are needed, but if you’re “older” and/or “mature”, only women need apply.
Curious.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
@ mike. I have to think that the number of older men of the 1960s interested in such a job would be low. Nursing was traditionally seen as a woman’s job in the US after the Civil War.
August 20th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
My girlfriend started nursing school today. I need to email this to her and tell her she’s wasting her time with nursing school — she could ‘Learn Practical Nursing at Home in only 10 Short Weeks!’
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