Interview with Florence Marks

Abstract

Florence Marks begins by describing her background, including her education and why she went into nursing. She describes traveling to Denmark to temporarily work as a nurse; her experiences as a staff nurse and then assistant head nurse at the University Hospital; getting her master’s in nursing administration; working as nursing supervisor at Variety Club Hospital; her experiences as an instructor in the School of Nursing; and some of the other work she did after she had children. She discusses in detail her experiences as a nursing student at the University of Minnesota, including the School of Nursing curriculum when she was a student, clinical instruction and her experiences worked at different affiliated hospitals, her rural nursing experience, and living in Powell Hall.

She describes working as a woman chemist in the early 1950s; the perceived and real differences between RNs, LPNs, and nursing assistants; the technologies she worked with; curriculum changes in the School of Nursing; and the different ways women physicians were treated from the 1950s through the 1970s. She discusses the different relationship between nurses and physicians in private hospital settings and teaching hospitals; minority nursing students; nursing shortages; nursing students failing the state boards in the 1960s; the reorganization of the health sciences in 1970 and the impact on the School of Nursing. She compares her experiences as a nurse in Denmark and at the University Hospital. She talks about Katherine Densford, Florence Brennan, Ray Amberg, and Edna Fritz.