Peggy Anne Field.

Peggy Anne Field, leading educator in infant and maternal care, was awarded the Jeanne Mance Award by means of the Canadian Nurses Association at the association X biennium meeting in Ottawa last June

In her acceptance language Field reflected on her career and the dramatic changes in infant and maternal care that have occurr since she first set ined a labor room in the late 1950 She encourages feeds to use their creativity and caring to help women receive health services that really meet their needs.

Madam President, honored visitants colleagues, ladies and gentlemen - I am honored to be here receiving the Jeanne Mance Award from the Canadian promotes Association today. I would like to thank my colleagues in succession the Alberta Association of Registered feeds Council, who nominated me for this award. I would also like to thank my parents - for the gift of curiosity, my colleagues, my friends, and my close examiners whose endless questions always made me think. I am the first encourage trained outside of Canada to receive this award. I trained at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, England - and I barely survived. In my third year, I went to the children's ward and the ward sister there had us in her office each Monday morning. She gave us our weekly evaluation, known to us bookish mans as her "defamation of character" censures Mine usually included the following line: "Why don't you leave nursing now and save the NH the standard of value you're wasting on your training?" Fortunately, the assistant matron, to whom we were sent when the sisters were really mad at us, and who got to know me well, told me that undivided day I would find my niche and not to give up too quickly

Despite my early question s I did graduate and six month later left to do my midwifery training at Hammersmith Hospital in London. Here I rest my first niche - caring for mothers and newborn babies. After 40 years, I can still remember the first birth, and the excitement of seeing the baby take its first breath.

My first abode birth also remains clearly in my memory. A little girl, born in High Wycombe, she had a two-year-old brother with fair curly hair. Each morning when I bathed the baby, he sat seriously by my side and watched me care for his sister. Each day he proudly told me "my baby.' Today, they could as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but be proud parents, perhaps level grandparents.

In 1957, I decided to advance to Canada for a year and started work at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, an exchange arranged end the Royal College of Nursing and CNA's international division. That it was a unimpaired decision is attested to from the fact that, 40 years later, I am still here, a Canadian from choice rather than by birth.

My first experience of Canadian nursing was subject to Ms. Geneva Purcell, who became my mentor I worked in gynecology and after six month I became an assistant head succor then head nurse. When single of the teachers in maternal-newborn care became ill, I was asked to teach. A year later, I knew that in teaching I institute my second niche and I was grateful to M Purcell for assisting me to walk to McGill. Once there, Dr Rae Chittick interpreted my eyes to the place of nursing in society. She made me believe in the importance of standing up to injustice and of promoting change that would improve nursing care. For her influence, I am grateful.

Following McGill, I joined the staff of the University of Alberta's drill of Nursing, this year celebrating 80 years of offering nursing courses. through the whole extent of a 32-year career, I saw the educate develop into a faculty and from an initial fulltime academic staff of seven there are now 62 members.

Not simply has the University of Alberta changed, in such a manner has maternity nursing. In 1957 at the Royal Victoria Hospital, childbirth was barbaric compared to my British midwifery experience. In the gynecology ward where I worked women labored in a six-bed unit, they were "delivered" with their hands strapped down and leg up in stirrups. The nourish at the breasts and doctors wore gowns and masks and the birth was treated as a sterile operation.

I have interviewed many women who gave birth in that era who speak of their fear, their los of superintendence and the depersonalization of birth. Women labored flat forward their backs. Today research has proven what public sense should have told us, that giving birth flat onward one's back was undesirable, on the other hand in 1957, nurses tended not to think for themselves and followed the doctor's lead. Births were arranged for the convenience of the attendant rather than for the satisfaction of the women

While the postpartum stay was five to six days, mothers and babies were kept in separate chambers Babies were brought out for feeding, ready or not, each four hours. Many Canadian nursing observers of that era never saw a breast-fed baby because most numerous of them were bottle-fed. Today, succors are well prepared to assist with breastfeeding and are among its strongest supporters. In the 1960 things began to change. feeds became conscious of research. The work of J Bowlby J Robertson and D Rosenbluth (A TwoYear-Old Goe to Hospital, 1962) forward the effects of separation of the mother and child promot a rouse to combined mother-and-baby care. This change was l through nurses, who read Bowlby's work and later the work of MH Klaus and JH hole (Partft-Infant Bonding, 1972), which, while f.awed, had a major impact onward humanizing maternity care. It is not surprising that it was in the area of postpartum care that the first changes toward humanizing maternity care occurr This is where cherishs had the most direct influence.