Les Soeurs Grises à l’Université de Montréal, 1923-1947 : de la gestion hospitalière à l’enseignement supérieur en nursing

Abstract

This article presents the role of the Grey Nuns in the development of the teaching of nursing in Quebec universities. The authors analyze the processes which have led to the formalization of this discipline through the examination of their archives and those of the Faculty of Nursing Science of the Université de Montréal. They reveal the transfer of practical knowledge that Grey Nuns have acquired as administrators in the major hospitals of the country to theoretical knowledge which is essential to the establishment of nursing as a science. In this manner, the Grey Nuns have also been involved in the process of secularization of health care while confirming their irrevocable tie to Catholic methodologies. Thus emerges a model of care as the structural element of hospital organization resisting the multiple transformations in the health care field in the period following the First World War. Furthermore, in relation to other works, the importance of this model is highlighted as well as its continuance in the educational and health care system in spite of the democratization and secularization movement in the 1970s.