Hildegard Peplau: biography of this famous American nurse

The field of nursing is so important today in part thanks to the contributions of people like Hildegard Peplau.

Next we will go through the most significant events of his biography and we will also be able to know the methodology that this professional contribution to make a very significant leap in the way nurses work, notably improving their profession. Let's start with this biography of Hildegard Peplau in summarized format.

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Brief biography of Hildegard Peplau

Hildegard Peplau was born in the city of Reading, in the state of Pennsylvania, United States, in 1909. Her parents were immigrants from Europe, specifically from Germany. This marriage had six children, of which Hildegard occupied the second position by order of birth.

From a very young age, she, Hildegard Peplau, knew that, as a woman, she had her options to escape roles in a certain way. traditional women went through training in a profession that allowed her to grow, and that is why she always wanted to be nurse

. So much so that since she was little she was in charge of caring for the people around her.

One of the events that had a great impact on Peplau's upbringing was the flu pandemic in 1918, which made millions of people sick, causing the death of many citizens. As a child, Hildegard Peplau was aware of the consequences that a pathology could have on people.

So when she finished her primary and secondary education, she had no doubt what the next step she was going to take in her life was: she would become a nurse. For this she attended the School of Nursing at Pottstown Hospital, in Pennsylvania, the state in which she lived. It was the year 1931. After completing these studies, she began working in that hospital and later in one in New York.

She subsequently managed to gain access to the nursing position at Bennington College in Vermont. In this institution she took the opportunity to train in psychology, thus completing a profile totally oriented to the care of others. Hildegard peplau she combined Bennington's job with another at Chestnut Lodge asylumher, while she was learning interpersonal psychology from Harry Stack Sullivan.

Nurse during the war

It was the year 1943, so World War II was at its peak, and many American citizens were forced to enlist or otherwise serve. It was the case with Hildegard Peplau, that she had to join the US Army Nurse Corps.

This motivated she temporarily transferred her to England, where she collaborated in the field hospital 312. When the American School of Military Psychiatry was at this location, she had the her opportunity to meet some of the eminences of mental health, both from England and from USA.

During her stay in this military hospital, she met a psychiatrist with whom she would have a daughter, but since he was married, she Hildegard Peplau raised the girl as a single mother. Added to this was the death of Hildegard's mother also at this time, so they were turbulent years for her.

Once back in America, she Hildegard Peplau was one of the representatives of the mental health professionals who met with the government to try to promote a new law to ensure the well-being of patients suffering from this type of pathology in the US. The law went ahead in 1946.

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Great reputation

Hildegard Peplau's reputation was growing. After obtaining her doctorate from the Teachers College of Columbia University, she also obtained her degree that certified her as an expert psychoanalyst, through the teachings of the William Alanson White Institute, New York.

With an enviable resume, she taught at Teachers College itself and also at Rutgers University, where she would remain for two decades, beginning in 1954. She was responsible for training the first generations of students who attended the psychiatric nursing specialization.

It is throughout this stage that Hildegard Peplau creates much of her work and shares her knowledge with a multitude of institutions related to mental health. One of the maxims of this author is the importance of a complete training in those nurses who are going to work in the field of psychiatry, since they require very specific protocols to be able to exercise with guarantees.

Hildegard Peplau's idea was to achieve a qualitative leap between the style that had been used in psychiatric hospitals, which were basically places where people were kept in custody. the patients, to change the paradigm towards a center in which these people received the therapeutic attention they needed, and there the nurses played a fundamental role.

So, she organized a summer program that she developed for almost two decades in which she trained a multitude of these professionals, visiting hospitals specialized in psychiatry throughout all States United. In these sessions, Hildegard Peplau taught her colleagues the proper methodology for treating patients.

She taught them to perform therapy individually but also in groups and with family members. Likewise, it gave them guidelines for correctly interviewing interns and other techniques for interpersonal relationships that could be very useful during the day-to-day life of their profession.

An Eminence of Nursing

Hildegard Peplau became a worldwide reference in the world of nursing. So much so that the World Health Organization itself used her advisory services. Equally, University institutions around the world hired her on a regular basis to give talks and training workshops for nurses and students of this discipline.

Within the United States, Peplau was the figure of highest consideration when it came to making inquiries about her field of knowledge. For this reason, there were several national organizations that had it on a regular basis. Some of them were the National Institute of Mental Health or even the Air Force.

Among the positions that she reached during her career, the president of the American Nurses Association stands out.. Ella Hildegard Peplau continued to be an eminence in this field until she passed away at the age of 89, in Sherman Oaks, in the state of California, in 1999.

The six role model

Among all the contributions that Hildegard Peplau made, there is one that stands out especially, and it is the model of the six nursing roles. This model refers to the six roles that the nurse progressively develops during her profession. We will see them in detail below.

1. Stranger role

The role of stranger is the first that the nurse performs, since it is the one that occurs when she has just met the patient and that climate of trust does not yet exist among them. At this stage, kindness and respect should prevail.

2. Resource role

Later, Hildegard Peplau tells us that the nurse becomes a valuable resource for the patient, since she is the person with whom she maintains communication about her condition. Thus, the nurse should provide that information in a way that is easy for the other person to understand, adapting to her characteristics.

3. Teaching role

The next function is that of teaching, since the professional must teach the inmate various guidelines in relation to the pathology for which he is admitted. For this reason, she must adapt her language, as happened in the previous paper, to transmit said knowledge in a simple and understandable way.

4. Counselor role

But those are not the only roles. Hildegard Peplau states that the nurse is also a counselor, an especially important quality in the field of psychiatryher, since she sometimes has to guide patients and help them understand what is happening.

5. Surrogate role

Likewise, a good nurse also acts as a substitute for those people who were important to the intern in the past but are not there now. And it is that the nurse is going to become the figure of reference for patients, so they will be fundamental people in their day to day. This has to be understood by the professional.

6. Leader role

The last of the roles that Hildegard Peplau exposes in her model is that of leader. Leadership should be a quality for nurses who work in the area of ​​psychiatry, as they are a key element in ensuring that patients achieve the objectives that have been established. depending on her pathology, in order to achieve an improvement.

Bibliographic references:

• Callaway, B.J. (2002). Hildegard Peplau: Psychiatric nurse of the century. Springer Publishing Company.
• Peplau, H.E. (1991). Interpersonal relations in nursing: A conceptual frame of reference for psychodynamic nursing. Springer Publishing Company.
• Winship, G., Bray, J., Repper, J., Hinshelwood, R.D. (2009). Collective biography and the legacy of Hildegard Peplau, Annie Altschul and Eileen Skellern; the origins of mental health nursing and its relevance to the current crisis in psychiatry. Journal of Research in Nursing.