Jul 30, 2009
AJN senior editor James Stubenrauch interviews Mary Deane
Lagerwey, PhD, RN, author of “The Third Reich, Nursing, &
AJN,” which appears the August issue. Lagerwey conducted
an historical analysis of AJN’s coverage of events in
Europe during the Nazi era and in the postwar years, comparing it
with that of other popular and professional publications. She found
that AJN failed to report on the complicity of German
nurses in the Holocaust and that, in the interest of promoting
international cooperation and an image of nursing unity,
AJN shirked its duty to hold German nurses accountable. In
the interview, she discusses the relevance of such historical
analysis to the current debate on the role of nursing during
wartime.