The pin-striped habit balancing charity and business in Catholic hospitals, 1865-1915.
BACKGROUND
Nursing literature seldom examines Catholic si. ters as entrepreneurs competing in the hospital marketplac even though they established hospitals throughout the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.


OBJECTIVE
This study examines the tension between hospita as businesses and charities by asking how nursing sisters, who took vows of poverty, could build impressive hospital networks. What links did they forge to make hospital building possible?


METHODS
Historical methodology is used which draws upon primary sources in archives of three women's religious congregations. These include nuns' constitutions and letters, hospital chronicles, journals, minutes of meetings, annual reports and census records. Secondary sources include nursing hospital, religious, and economic histories.


RESULTS
Catholic sisters' entrepreneurial activities were pragmatic adaptions that reflected their commitment to their nursing and hospital establishments. They raised money and formed alliances not to build personal fortunes but to build religious values. Their entrepreneurship and spirituality worked together.


CONCLUSIONS
Sister-nurses' viewed their actions as doing what was necessary to their mission. A finacially stable hospital, with it's large patient population, enhanced the social and spiritual importance of nun's work. Yet, the broad-based corporate culture of Catholic hospitals still needs further study.
Wall
Barbra Mann
BM
School of Nursing, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-1337, USA. bwall@nursing.purdue.edu
D002410:Catholicism / Q000266:history; D016520:Entrepreneurship; D005377:Financial Management, Hospital / Q000266:history*; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D016519:Hospitals, Religious / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history*; D006801:Humans; D009718:Nurse Administrators / Q000266:history*; D014481:United States