Oral History Program Dora Leskow Peterson Interviewed by Marci Farr 30 July 2008 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dora Leskow Peterson Interviewed by Marci Farr 30 July 2008 Copyright © 2009 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Dee School of Nursing was founded in 1910 to provide training for nurses who would staff the new Dee Memorial Hospital. The first class of eight nurses graduated from the school in 1913 and the school continued to operate until 1955, with a total of more than 700 graduates. A new nursing school and home located just east of the hospital was completed in 1917 and all nursing students were required to live in the home during their training. This oral history project was created to capture the memories of the school's alumni before their stories disappear in the same way the Dee Hospital has disappeared. The oral interviews focus on how the women became involved with the school, their experiences going through training, and how they used the training. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management Special Collections All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Dora Leskow Peterson, an oral history by Marci Farr, 30 July 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Dora Leskow Peterson Application Photo February 14, 1950 Graduation Photo Class of 1953 Dora Leskow Peterson July 30, 2008 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Dora Leskow Peterson. It was conducted July 30, 2008 and concerns her recollections and experiences with the Dee School of Nursing. The interviewer is Marci Farr. MF: This is Marci Farr. We are interviewing Dora Leskow Peterson. She graduated in 1953 from the Dee School of Nursing. It is July 30, 2008. We are interviewing her at her home in Clinton, Utah. Dora could you tell us a little about your early life, about your education, where you grew up? DP: I was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin in 1933 and in 1942 we moved to Logan, Utah and settled there. I grew up there in Logan, Utah. MF: Where did you attend school? DP: Woodruff Elementary, the Junior High, and Senior High School in Logan. MF: What made your decision to become a nurse? DP: We had a small farm in Logan. The railroad tracks ran between some of our pastures. One day, I was herding cows on the railroad tracks so they could eat the grass. An ambulance went by, a nice big, red ambulance. I knew that nurses usually accompanied the ambulance. It hit me as that ambulance went by that I wanted to be a nurse. MF: Tell us about when you were at Utah State, did you start your nurses training while you were there? DP: I started at Logan LDS Hospital. We did attend classes at Utah State Agricultural College. MF: The AC. 1 DP: We had some classes at the hospital. They were taught by the nursing staff. We basically had two instructors, Sylvia Mylensik…Gloria Farr…I think it was Gloria Farr. At Utah State, we walked to our classes from the Logan Hospital which was located kitty corner from the Logan L.D.S. temple. MF: Did you spend a year there at nurses training? DP: Two years. MF: Tell us why you came to the Dee Hospital. DP: Because the Logan LDS Hospital was very small. It didn’t pass accreditation to have a student nurse program. Twelve of us for our senior year were transferred to the Thomas D. Dee Memorial hospital and we completed our training there. MF: You graduated in ‘53 right? DP: Yes. MF: Were there any difference between the two training hospitals? DP: It was pretty much the same. MF: Were there any supervisors that you remember at the Dee Hospital? DP: Not really because when I transferred there my senior year I still had the affiliations to do in Denver, Colorado for pediatrics. I think they were six weeks at Pueblo, Colorado for psychiatric training, six weeks at the TB sanatorium in Ogden and a month vacation. I know I finished my OB training at the Dee Hospital. MF: You had your other training you had to do and you were gone so you really did not spend a lot of time there. DP: I did not really spend a concentrated amount of time at the Dee Hospital. 2 MF: Tell us about a typical day at the hospital when you were on shift duty. What did you do if you were on the morning shift? DP: You are making me think now. As students, you know that was a long time ago, we did temperature, pulse, and respirations on a typical day. I do remember we had all these thermometers we had to wash and clean and shake down. MF: Yes, we heard about that. If they broke you were responsible for breakage? DP: I do not remember that part of it. MF: Somebody said they had a towel with one hundred and you’d sit there and… DP: Oh they were doing that because otherwise… you are going like this, shaking each one, and it takes forever. Other things we did were to give bed baths and make beds with clean linens using flat sheets, and the corners needed to be mitered. MF: So what did you do when you had a night off? What did you typically do with your friends? Did you stay at the nurse’s home? DP: Sometimes we stayed at the nurses’ home. Sometimes we walked into Ogden and back. We didn’t have any other transportation at that time. We walked and it was fairly safe to do that then. MF: Did you go home to Logan very often? DP: No. MF: Because you were working most of the time? DP: Yes. That whole year I basically stayed there. I don’t remember going home during that time frame. MF: Were you required to attend church if you had a Sunday off? 3 DP: I do not know if it was a requirement. We were basically LDS, the twelve of us that had transferred over and it was a customary thing that we did. MF: I’ve asked some people and they said that early on it was. They had to go sign a paper or they would just say yes they went to church. Just asking… DP: We had to sign in and out of the nursing home every time we left and say where we were going and when we would be back. We had a mother, the nursing home mother. MF: Yes. You had a curfew right? DP: Yes, definitely, there was a curfew. MF: For your capping and pinning ceremony when you were in Logan, it was probably the same as at the Dee Hospital? It was after six months right? DP: We got the lantern, the Florence Nightingale lantern. It was part of the capping ceremony. MF: Did you get your pin at that same time too or was that not until graduation? DP: That was graduation. What we received were stripes on our cap for which year we were. MF: That is how they would tell right? DP: I think, the first…we had them down the sides. One year was this demonstrating …and two years…and the third year…when you graduated you got to wear the stripe all the way across your cap. MF: That is good to know. Graduation, you said, was at the twenty-ninth ward, right? DP: Yes, that is what this newspaper article says. MF: Did you have a January and a June graduation or was it all at once? 4 DP: It was all at once. MF: I know they said in 1947 it was January and June, they had two graduations. When you were in training did they pay you at all? DP: No I do not remember getting any stipend. When I started in Logan some of the senior class members were talking about receiving a stipend. MF: You received room and board? DP: Right. We had room and board. Actually, my tuition for the first year at Logan LDS hospital was thirty-five dollars. For the whole year, can you imagine that? MF: That would be nice now instead of…what…three thousand dollars? DP: I don’t remember paying for class books for college. Somehow the hospital covered that. MF: Did you have to buy your uniforms or were they supplied? Do you remember? DP: They were supplied. MF: Did you stay at the Dee after graduation? DP: I went back to Logan. I worked at the Logan LDS hospital. I went on to another year of college so I had four years of college. MF: Were you able to get your bachelors of nursing or did you just get your bachelors degree? DP: It was just a bachelor’s degree because they didn’t have a nursing program at U.S.A.C. at that point in time. MF: Alright. Did you stay up in Logan? What did you do after that? DP: I roomed with a friend named Janeal Bell that graduated with us. We decided to go to Salt Lake. We went to the LDS hospital in Salt Lake, worked there for 5 awhile. I was dissatisfied there. Because I had to work Sundays. The new nurses that they hired in always had to take the Sunday shifts and I was tired of that. They put us on the gynecology unit. I told the director of nurses that I was quitting. I didn’t have another job. She asked me, “Do you have another job?” I said, “No.” I told her I was quitting because I didn’t want to work Sundays all the time. A few months after that she called me and said, “Do you have a job yet or are you out on the street selling pencils?” I said, “Well, I’m still here.” I had saved some money so I was fine. She said, “Well I’ve just talked to Doctor Bryner in surgery today and he has an opening in his office for a nurse. The office staff is LDS. They don’t work on Sundays. He said to come down and get an interview.” MF: So that was perfect. DP: So that was good. I had other interviews for another job but it was not working, it was not what I wanted. I went there and worked in their office. Let’s see, that would have been 1955 to about 1957. That was when I got married and left. It was a wonderful office to work for. Doctor Richards, Doctor Wood, Doctor Bryner, Doctor Sharp… MF: That was in Salt Lake right? DP: Yes that was in Salt Lake. MF: Did you keep up with nursing after you got married? DP: I kept up with nursing after we got married. I got married and we moved to Ogden. I worked at the Ogden Clinic for Doctor Rulon Howe. Then I ended up 6 having babies. When you get three babies in one year, it is hard to get back to work right away. MF: That is true. DP: I basically stayed home for a year. Weber County Chronic Disease hospital in Roy opened up and needed nurses. I went there. At that time we were living in Clinton, Utah. My husband said you need to get to work. He knew how stressful it was staying home with the kids all the time, so I went there. I worked the evening shift a couple evenings a week. I stayed there for the next thirty-three years. When time was ready and my children were certain ages…we had six children total…then I went to Days and spent my last eight years as Assistant Director of Nurses there. By then it was Weber Memorial Care Center because they had changed from the hospital status. MF: Is that where the nursing home is now? DP: Yes, it is a nursing home care center with physical therapy in it. MF: Is it Heritage Park now? Is that what it is? DP: It is. They changed the name because when it was Weber County and the hospital, they were trying to limit their intake of people just from Weber County. It went into a nursing home and that was not so good. They asked us what we thought and I said I think we need a name change so it does not limit us to Weber County because so many people feel like it is, and in the past that was what it was restricted to, taking people from Weber County. The name change took place. MF: That is where you retired from. 7 DP: It is. MF: Did you have any associations with any members of the Dee family? Did you know any of them? DP: I did not. MF: Is there anything else that you thought of that you wanted to share with us? DP: Do you want to know some of the techniques we used in nurses training? MF: Tell us what you have. We would like to know whatever you would like to share with us. DP: We had to sharpen all of our own needles. MF: How did you do that? DP: We sharpened them on a little sharpening stone. Then you tested them to see if they were sharp. You had to make sure they did not have little prongs on them. You rubbed them against your fingers to make sure you did not have any little prongs on them. We had the glass syringes. You had to sterilize everything yourself in a little sterilizing…water sterilizing unit. Our pain medications, most of the Demerol, the Morphine, and Codeine came in little pills. MF: Oh really? DP: You signed out for it because it was still a narcotic and you had it under control. You put one pill at the bottom of that glass syringe, took the plunger and squished it. You drew out solution and shook it to let it dissolve. MF: That is interesting. 8 DP: I know. This is unheard of nowadays. The distilled water or NS solution, whichever they recommended to be used was in a 30 cc vile. You withdrew a cc of that and shook it in there until it was dissolved and injected that. MF: You had to save everything, redo it, sterilize everything… DP: You want to hear what we did with the leftover soap that people didn’t use in the hospital? MF: Tell us about that. DP: I am not sure people want to hear that anymore. We put it into a large pitcher and put water in it. We had an enema can with a long hose on it and then an enema tip. The tip was always changed. Well the can was reused though but the solution we used in the enema can was from the soap suds that we got from the leftover soap. We put it in this pitcher, and you had water in it, and you swirled it around and you got soap suds from it. That was part of it. You put that in there and some water and the doctor would recommend an HHH enema… MF: Yes… DP: The high, hot, and hell of a lot. MF: We haven’t heard that story yet. DP: Really? Oh I’m surprised. We all had so many bed pans. Everybody was using bed pans in those days. They did not have the nice individual bathrooms that they have nowadays. MF: Yes. DP: Patients stayed longer at the hospital in those days. The bedpans…we had a special bedpan sterilizer. Did you hear of that one? 9 MF: I think my mom’s cousin was telling us about that. DP: Phyllis? MF: Phyllis, yes. DP: As we emptied the bedpans we would put them in this sterilizer which flushed hot water through them which was really nice. Then we would put it back in the patient’s room. We always had to be sure we had a cover over the bedpan as we carried it through the halls from the patient’s room to this bedpan sterilizer where we emptied the bedpans. MF: She said they were good on ice when you wanted to go sleigh riding. DP: I bet they were. MF: That is what she said. We were like ok that is perfect, you know, Ogden has lots of hills so it is all good. Well I appreciate you letting us come Dora and sharing with us. Is there anything else you would like to share with us? DP: I know you have seen the set of the nursing books up at McKay Dee. At one time they were on display, the exact identical set that we used. I have my copies. They are really nice to have. MF: I was talking to Faye Ball. Do you know Faye? DP: Yes. MF: I was talking to her yesterday and she was showing me some of her anatomy book. She still has it; where you had to draw everything. It is totally different than now because you were trained how to be nurses and now you are educated on how to be a nurse. I think there is a total difference because you learned how to do everything. 10 DP: We learned everything that was available knowledge-wise to learn at that point in time but so much more has come to light and surfaced. It is just marvelous and wonderful, the technology that takes place now. Nurses are trained differently now. They do not have all the bedside training I do not think. A friend of mine that grew up in Salt Lake, Grace Matsumura, took her nurses training in Salt Lake but she came to Ogden for affiliations. MF: I know some nurses went to the University of Utah right? DP: That is possible but I wasn’t aware of it. Whether that was after they started the Weber program and no longer had the Dee hospital training program which was a three year program and then Weber State did the two year program. Things really changed. In one year you could get your LPN… MF: …and then get your RN for the next… DP: I remember when they even grandfathered in LPN’s…when they started the LPN program there had been so many that had worked basically doing what LPN’s did or were being trained to do but they were nurses aides…they grandfathered them in to the LPN program. MF: They would be able to be credited for what they did. DP: Yes MF: It is a great program. DP: Of course LPN’s get more training and different type of training now than what they did then. We did a lot of bedside nursing. It was very hard to read the doctors orders. MF: Chicken scratches. 11 DP: Yes. MF: You had to transcribe everything too. DP: I remember when I went back to work at the Logan hospital and was a nurse on the division then. The doctor was making rounds. They were always dressed in a suit. They were never casual like they are now. They were dressed in a Sunday suit to come visit their patients. You would walk around with them from room to room and you had better have a notepad and pen in your hand because they would give you the orders for that patient right there. We would have to go transcribe them onto their records. If you were sitting at the nurses station when the doctor came you always had to stand showing respect for the doctor. In the nursing program we were always called by our last name, never our first name as it showed respect and professionalism. Our charting had to be done in printing, not cursive. In Logan, when oxygen was ordered, maintenance brought up a large cylinder of oxygen which was then connected to a clear plastic tent that went over the patient and the top portion of the bed. MF: Well thank you for sharing everything with us. We appreciate you taking time. DP: You are welcome. MF: We appreciate your time. 12