Several years before joining McGill’s School for Graduate Nurses as its second director, Bertha Harmer wrote the first modern textbook in nursing education. Harmer was a brilliant thinker and The Principles and Practice of Nursing, first published in 1922, was the most comprehensive textbook on nursing and how it should be practiced since Florence Nightingale wrote Notes on Nursing. The textbook was widely used in North American nursing schools, and eventually internationally as well.
Groundbreaking at the time in its approach to nursing education, Harmer laid out the concepts that nursing should not only be concerned with the care of the sick, but should also encompass prevention of disease, and preservation of health. She believed strongly in combining the classroom and ward learning, in effect, learning by doing. The concept of ‘human needs’ was central to her thinking, and she encouraged nurses to see “the patient as a whole person, a human being, a member of a family and of the community.”
At nearly 700 pages with over 150 illustrations, the text was exceptionally thorough. It covered every aspect of nursing care in a hospital setting with chapters on daily patient care and detailed sections on both medical and surgical conditions.
Harmer explained in the preface that the book had two aims: to impress upon the student the fundamental principles of nursing, and to emphasize the underlying principles of each practical procedure or treatment. “Only by a thorough understanding along these lines can the student reap the full richness from her profession or give to the patient the sympathetic, intelligent and skilled care necessary to his welfare and recovery.”
Harmer authored three versions of the book up until her death in 1934, after which Virginia Henderson revised and edited three subsequent editions.