Shirley Whitfield flips through a year book during a ceremony to introduce the newly created digital archive of the Metropolitan General Hospital School of nursing archives at Windsor Regional Hospital. Photo credit: Tyler Brownbridge/The Windsor Star.Shirley Whitfield flips through a year book during a ceremony to introduce the newly created digital archive of the Metropolitan General Hospital School of nursing archives at Windsor Regional Hospital. Photo credit: Tyler Brownbridge/The Windsor Star.

UWindsor lends a hand to nursing school’s digital memories project

History professor Steven Palmer recently led his students and colleagues in a project to bring UWindsor expertise to a digital archives project that will preserve the memories of some pioneering local nurses.

The Former Metropolitan General Hospital School (MET) digital archives launch held this week at Windsor Regional Hospital has made the school’s yearbooks, documents and photos of a groundbreaking era in nursing education available to the public.

Dr. Palmer, Canada Research Chair in History of International Health, says MET was the first school of its kind in Canada and provided aspiring nurses with two years of academic and clinical instruction followed by a year of hospital work. This was a departure from previous nursing education which had students working in the hospital for the entire three years.

The school was established in 1954 where Windsor Regional Hospital’s Metropolitan Campus is currently located. Some of the program’s nurses were on hand for the event, which brought back beautiful and nostalgic memories of a long-ago time, thanks to the efforts of Kathleen Moderwell, the school’s director from 1958 to 1974.

Moderwell donated and organized countless pieces of school memorabilia which were then scanned in high-resolution by Palmer and his team for posting on the web.

View the digital archives on the Windsor Regional Hospital website. 

Read the Windsor Star article

Academic Area: