Description and Context
The Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing was fully approved by the Board of Nurse Examiners of the State of North Carolina. Students were graded on classroom instruction with a minimum of 75 percent passing score, practical work, personal appearance, and their professional etiquette. After three years, students who successfully fulfilled graduation requirements would receive a diploma and then be eligible to take state licensing examination. Only with passage of this examination could a nurse display her credentials as an R.N., or registered nurse. By 1938, over 180 graduates were working throughout the country in all branches of nursing. In addition, the Training School of the North Carolina State Sanatorium (Colored Division) was affiliated formally in that their students spent their third year of training in Durham. Pictured here are the nursing graduates in 1938. (Courtesy of Carolyn Henderson.)