100 years of registered nursing in Alberta: ‘the backbone of the health care system’

For 100 years, registered nurses have been providing aid to Albertans all over the province. The College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta celebrated the mark Friday by putting up a centennial display at Chinook Regional Hospital in Lethbridge.

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we’re pretty much the backbone of the health care system,” said College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta president Shannon Spenceley. “We have a rich history and I just think it’s really important for us to pause and celebrate that.”

There are over 37,000 registered nurses in Alberta, and with the centennial display, CARNA paid tribute to the nurses who worked before them. The display showed pictures of different eras in the profession, starting with district nurses in 1916.

“Back then they’d strap on their boots and be slogging through the mud in 300 square mile territories, to be some of the only medical care for farm families at that time,” Spenceley said.

The “mud-slogging” days might have been a century ago, but there have been dramatic changes more recently. Diane Shanks has been a registered nurse for 35 years and has seen the changes firsthand.

“I can remember in my early years we’d get meal trays and deliver them to all the rooms,” Shanks said. “We’d set people up for their meals; we’d clean some instruments.”

Shanks says now, the role of the nurse has evolved to coordinating and planning care, among other things.

“There’s so many opportunities and so many care environments in parts of our system where nurses are involved, so it’s pretty exciting,” she said.

Despite the transformation of the profession, Shanks still believes some things will never change.

“The time to sit and talk with patients, spend time, the teaching, the care and compassion that I see every day that our nurses are providing to patients that are hospitalized—those are the things that never go. That’s part of what we do.”

National Nursing Week ends on May 15.