Professor PhDr. Valérie Tóthová, Ph.D., Dr. h. c., took part in the Conference on the History of Nursing and Healthcare, organized in October by the American Association for the History of Nursing (AAHN) in Wilmington, North Carolina (USA). The programme of the 42nd annual conference included lectures on African American physicians and nurses, the history of public health, nurses’ labour activism, and pedagogical approaches to teaching history. Professor Tóthová enriched the conference with a Central European perspective on the history of nursing, focusing on the example of the First Czechoslovak Republic. In her lecture, she summarized how nursing education developed in interwar Czechoslovakia.
This prestigious association brings together researchers from around the world who study the history of nursing. Its aim is to promote research, education, and international cooperation in this field. Each year, the AAHN organizes a conference where current results of historical research are presented and the links between the history and contemporary practice of nursing are discussed.
The event also featured a screening of the documentary American Coup: Wilmington 1898 and a thematic city tour called WilmingtoNColor Tour, dedicated to the local historical heritage.
“The guided historical tour recalled the events of 1898, when the remarkable prosperity of Wilmington’s African American community was violently suppressed and a unique example of interracial cooperation and coexistence—including educational, cultural, and healthcare institutions—was destroyed,” said Prof. Tóthová, who serves as Vice-Dean for Science and Research and as Director of the Institute of Nursing, Midwifery, and Emergency Care at the FHSS USB. At the conference, she spoke in the section Historical Foundations of Professional Nursing Education Across the Globe with a paper titled “From Tradition to Innovation: How Nursing Education Was Formed in Interwar Czechoslovakia (1918–1938).”
The history of nursing has deep roots in the United States – modern nursing itself was shaped there. The influence of American nurses was also crucial for the development of nursing in the First Czechoslovak Republic, where they played a significant role through the initiatives of Alice Masaryková and cooperation with the American Red Cross.
The history of Czech and Czechoslovak nursing and healthcare systems is also strongly represented at the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, University of South Bohemia. Between 2020 and 2023, the faculty participated as a co-investigator in an interdisciplinary project funded by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) titled The Healthcare System of the First Czechoslovak Republic in the Context of National and Social Structure – Centre vs. Periphery (GAČR 20-09470S). In 2022 and 2024, the faculty organized international conferences on the history of healthcare, with another scholarly meeting planned for 2026.
