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5 [Rockefeller THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY
. University /< 1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10021
“> AP June 15, 1979

Sr

JOSHUA LEDERBERG

PRESIDENT

Dr. Robert S. Millen

177 Wheatley Road
Brookville

Glen Head, New York 11545

‘Dear Dr. Millen:

Thank you for your letter of May 30th. I have no
doubt at all that the nursing profession needs a serious
reexamination but so, for that matter, does the problem
of establishing clinical sensitivity for newly educated
physicians.

I do not know whether you were aware of the uproar
that greeted me when, through my own lack of appreciation
of the dynamics of the situation, I was challenged with
having ignored the nursing profession. This is by way
of explaining some of the remarks in the enclosed copy of
my letter to Dean Lambertsen of the New York Hospital-
Cornell Nursing School. That occasion led me to try to
collect what thoughts I could offer about the nursing-
doctor relationship but I would be the first to insist on
my purely amateur standing on this particular subject.

I am not sure how the policies that led to the close
of the nursing school relate to the issues you are bring-
ing out in your letter and its enclosures. The professional
nursing organizations appear, quite understandably, to be
moving to-higher and higher professional and academic cre-
dentials which may be in conflict.with some of the proposals
in your letter. (By the way my own hospital experience,
mentioned in the enclosure, was also at the Hospital for
Special Surgery). I do not see any conflict between learn-
ing from books and clinically directed experience; and sure-
ly some appropriate mix of these is ideally to be sought
for both the nursing and medical professions. I believe
you are suggesting that there be a less rigorously defined
boundary between the practical nurse and the registered
nurse; I am also suggesting that there ought to be a com-
parable latitude between the nurse and the physician, at
Dr. Robert S. Millen
June 15, 1979

-2-

least with respect to life-long educational opportunities
for movement from one to the other channel.

However, after the experience of May 23, I suspect
that my own voice is not the one most likely to be sought
after for further comment on nursing education.

As to your comment on phlebotomy: the situation you
described is of course quite notoriously ubiquitous. But
it becomes self-fulfilling, since if the young interns
don't get the chance at some experience -- perhaps with
some minor butchery during the learning process -- they
will never develop either the skill or the self-confidence.
Nevertheless, I have never permitted myself to be punctured
by a resident if an experienced nurse was anywhere in sight.

You sincerely

Joshua Lederberg

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