{"id":117176,"date":"2024-11-13T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/newsroom\/?p=117176"},"modified":"2024-11-12T18:58:00","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T00:58:00","slug":"a-lesson-in-nursing-history-as-shown-by-dolls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/newsroom\/2024\/11\/13\/a-lesson-in-nursing-history-as-shown-by-dolls\/","title":{"rendered":"Doll collection tracks nursing student uniform styles"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Ruby is a nursing student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also is a doll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Ruby is one of a collection of 54 nursing student dolls in McGoogan Health Sciences Library\u2019s special collections and archives. The collection was donated to the library in 2012 from the Nebraska State Historical Society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruby and her fellow dolls were created in a project led by Clara Siemsen, a former military nurse and nurse at Methodist Hospital, said Darby Kurtz, assistant professor, archivist and public historian at the UNMC library. Ruby herself is dressed as a nursing student from the Mennonite Hospital School of Nursing in Beatrice, circa 1911-1929, and was dressed by Elizabeth Epps (Sister Alice), a class of 1922 Mennonite Hospital School of Nursing alumna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nursing dolls are not new<\/a> and weren\u2019t when Siemsen began her project. The then-popular style of \u201cVogue dolls\u201d Siemsen and her team used featured \u201cNurse Ginny\u201d in several types of uniform and are collectibles today<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Siemsen, who was a skilled seamstress as well as a nurse, brought a historian\u2019s eye to the project, aiming to use the Vogue dolls to recreate real nursing student uniforms from around the state and across Nebraska\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See the McGoogan Health Science Library\u2019s digital display of the dolls<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe just wanted to catalog the history of the uniforms,\u201d Kurtz said. \u201cAnd over the years of the project, other nurses across the state heard about it, and so they joined in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Siemsen and her fellow nurses eventually completed 58 dolls. The McGoogan currently holds 54 \u2013 four of the dolls featured in the collection were given to the Nebraska hospitals they represented that had associated libraries or regional museums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The collection features student uniforms that include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n