Stacey Peeples
When walking through the second floor of the Cathcart building, staff, patients, and visitors can take a walk past nearly 300 years of PAH history, as part of a temporary historical exhibition. Nursing Excellence at the Pennsylvania Hospital displays a timeline from the founding of PAH in 1751 to 2022, spotlighting the hospital’s diverse nursing workforce whose contributions have shaped PAH into the comprehensive medical facility it is today.
“The exhibit takes you through the preliminary documents we have in our archives to some of the more modern accomplishments at PAH,” said Stacey Peeples, historical curator and lead archivist. “We wanted to recognize previously unknown players in PAH’s development, highlighting new stories, along with our well-known nurses, to illuminate the importance of nursing to the history of medicine.”
Some of the featured personalities include Lucy Finley, who originally served as a laundress in 1776 and later became a nurse in 1783 at the hospital; Helen Grace McClelland, director of Nursing in the 1940s, who advanced the nursing profession by implementing more formalized educational opportunities for staff; and Barbara Lynn Smith Bell, the first Black graduate of PAH’s School of Nursing in 1953.
In addition, the exhibit gives a look into the early days of clinical care and former PAH traditions, such as rules for nursing in the 19th century – “If a nurse should take care of a fever case…she should wash her hands occasionally” – along with insight into capping ceremonies in which student nurses received their specially designed caps and uniforms with bibbed aprons and silver belts.
During this year’s American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Magnet Conference, where thousands of nurses from around the globe traveled to Philadelphia to celebrate nursing excellence, Peeples held tours of PAH for conference visitors. They ranged from staff at other local Pennsylvania hospitals to an international group from Brazil, who were some of the first people to experience the new exhibit. A nursing director from the University of Colorado, who was a first-time visitor to Philadelphia, shared her appreciation of the tours: “What a gift to have a curator on staff who can share these rich traditions with the public!”
“All of our visitors loved the exhibit visually, but I think they were also proud to see the history of nursing on such prominent display,” said Peeples. “We worked on this project for nearly two years, and it’s special to see these stories from our records come to life this way.”