Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/215

199 Extensions of Nursing Field 199 quarterly, and was presented to the national or- ganization by the Cleveland Visiting Nurse Asso- ciation, which had developed it from a quarterly bulletin on local work to interest local contributors. Nurses actively engaged in public health nursing, or any who are interested in it, are eligible for active or associate membership, depending upon their professional qualifications. If, in looking back over the road by which nurses have advanced, we may feel a certain justifiable pride in noting that opportunities for service offered to them have never been underestimated or neglected by their organized group leaders, this just pride is especially stimulated by a survey of the army of public health nurses. Its policy was to co-operate with every other agency in the country having objects compatible with its own, and to build up a presentation of the public health nursing service as a public utility which should be extended to the entire people. The vision of the earliest settlement workers had al- ways been the removal of the stigma of charity, and also of the danger of casualness, from useful and necessary public health work, by having it made a communal responsibility. This view was emphasized by the new organization. The pro- gramme of the association soon after its formation