Interview with A. Marilyn Sime

A. Marilyn Sime was born in North Dakota. She received her Diploma in Nursing in 1956 from St. Francis School of Nursing in Minot, ND; her BS in Nursing Education, with a minor in psychiatric nursing in 1959 from the University of Minnesota. She received her MS in Psychiatric Nursing in 1964 from Boston University, and her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology in 1973 from the University of Minnesota. She worked as a staff nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Minot, ND, from 1956-57, in the surgical service at the University of Minnesota Hospital from 1957-58, and at St. Andrews Hospital in Minneapolis from 1958-59. From 1960-62, she was an instructor in the baccalaureate program in Psychiatric Nursing at South Dakota State College. She joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota School of Nursing in 1964, first as Instructor (1964-68), then Assistant Professor (1972-74). She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1974. From 1978 to 1995, Sime served as director of Graduate Studies and assistant dean of Graduate Studies. She left the University of Minnesota School of Nursing in 1968 to pursue graduate work in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota. She returned as a faculty member in the School of Nursing in 1972. She retired from the University of Minnesota in 1997.A. Marilyn Sime begins by discussing her background, including her education. She discusses her experiences as a baccalaureate student at the University of Minnesota; working as a nurse at the University Hospital in the late 1950s; working as a nurse in Minot, ND, in the 1950s; her experiences as an instructor at the University of Minnesota; teaching in the baccalaureate program; and her doctoral research. She compares her responsibilities at the different places she worked, particularly Minot and the University Hospital. She describes nursing curriculum changes in the 1960s; technologies she interacted with in the critical care unit; how physicians treated nurses; the efforts of the School of Nursing to secure funding for building Unit F; the concern in the 1960s over the shortage of health care workers; challenge exams for RNs in the 1970s; the Boston University School of Nursing; the rural nursing program at the University of Minnesota; and the Block Nurse Program at the University of Minnesota. She discusses team nursing; faculty organization issues and discontent with Edna Fritz’s leadership; the effects of the School of Nursing being part of the College of Medical Sciences in the 1960s and the changes with the reorganization of the health sciences in the School of Nursing becoming more autonomous in 1970; and relations between the health science units and their faculty after the reorganization. She talks about the practical nursing program; changes in the graduate nursing curriculum and the development of doctoral program; funding; issues of gender; the women’s health movement; the development of the nurse midwifery program; the public health nursing program; the relationship between the University Hospital and the School of Nursing; the Minnesota Nursing Association, the American Nursing Association, and the National League of Nursing; and nurse practitioners. She remembers Katherine Densford, Edna Fritz, Isabel Harris, Irene Ramey, and Lyle French