The candidate's immediate goal is to acquire knowledge of historical research methods and ethics to study nurses' participation in the medical experiments of Nazi Germany as the first study in a series on research-related ethical dilemmas that have confronted nurses. The long-term career goal is to develop a funded research program on these ethical dilemmas and to provide leadership in research ethics from a historical perspective. The research career development plan consists of formal coursework in historiography, the history of the Holocaust, and bioethics. Following this, four weeks of mentored study will be done in historical methods at the Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania and in bioethics at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Ongoing mentorship will be provided and will include assigned readings, presentations, consultations with other faculty at the centers, and critique of work in progress. The research project is a study of nurses' participation in the medical experiments of the Nazi concentration camps. These atrocities led to the Nuremberg Code, including the principle of informed consent, which defines the ethics of experimentation on human subjects. Nurses obtained subjects, assisted with procedures, and cared for the prisoners afterward. Nurse-survivors of Auschwitz and Ravensbruck concentration camps will be interviewed and primary source archival documents from US and European archives will be analyzed to investigate the nurses' participation and the ethical dimensions of this participation. A social history framework will be used and the relationship among gender, political power, and class will be examined as they intersect with the ethical dimensions of the actions. An awareness of the nurses' roles in the experiments will heighten nurses' understanding of the genesis of the Code and increase the Code's relevance to nurses. A more thoughtful and comprehensive presentation of the elements of informed consent to patients is the application of this study to patient care.
| Georges, Jane M; Benedict, Susan (2008) Nursing gaze of the Eastern Front in World War II: a feminist narrative analysis. ANS Adv Nurs Sci 31:139-52 |
