Anna M Taylor’s 1941 Ward Teaching: Methods of Clinical Instruction is as detailed a breakdown of clinical nursing education as you could wish to see. Taylor takes the instructor or program manager through every step of setting up and executing a course of clinical instruction, right down to how to introduce a new nurse into the group and a list of seven factors that will determine the success or failure of a group conference on a single patient’s care.
Taylor is interested in every aspect of the instruction process and goes so far as to provide blanks of the forms she recomends; for example, this one for an individual conference between the student and head nurse. Taylor suggests a 30-minute format for these meetings, with the first five minutes spent on “establishing the tone of the conference.”
With a publication date in 1941, it’s difficult to tell from the volume itself whether it was printed before or after America’s entry into World War II, but Taylor’s prose certainly has a wartime efficiency feel to it, perhaps already inspired by efficiency studies of the 1920s and 1930s. There’s no time granted for chat, small talk, or any kind of work relaxation. Taylor’s nurses are on task one hundred percent of the time and not just with each other but, by implication, with the patients as well.