Originally published: False dawn / Karen Buhler-Wilkerson. New York : Garland Pub., 1989.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Since its initial publication in 1989 by Garland Press, Karen Buhler Wilkerson's False Dawn: The Rise and Fall of Public Health Nursing remains the definitive work on the creation, work, successes, and failures of public health nursing in the United States. False Dawn explores and answers the provocative question: why did a movement that became a significant vehicle for the delivery of comprehensive health care to individuals and families fail to reach its potential? Through carefully researched chapters, Wilkerson details what she herself called the "rise and fall" narrative of public health nursing: rising to great heights in its patients' homes in the struggle to control infectious diseases, assimilate immigrants, and tame urban areas -- only to flounder during the later growth of hospitals, significant immigration restrictions, and the emergence of chronic diseases as endemic in American society"-- Provided by publisher

Foreword: Can there be a new dawn for public health nursing? / Susan M. Reverby and Julie A. Fairman -- Preface -- Chapter 1. Trained nurses for the sick poor: care, cleanliness, and character -- Chapter 2. Creating their own domain: ladies, nurses, and the sick poor -- Chapter 3. The hope and promise of public health -- Chapter 4. Preserving the treasures of their tradition: the founding of the National Organization for Public Health Nursing and the Red Cross Rural Nursing Service -- Chapter 5. The decline of public health nursing: economical and pragmatic but no longer necessary -- Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Suggested readings -- Index -- About the author -- Available titles in the Critical Issues in Health and Medicine series.

Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on February 08, 2021).