Hildegard Peplau: biography of this famous American nurse.

A summary of the life of Hildegard Peplau, the nurse who created the six-role model.

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

Below we will go through the most significant events of her biography and we will also learn about the methodology that this professional contributed to make a very significant leap in the way nurses work, significantly improving their profession. Let's start with this biography of Hildegard Peplau in summary format..

Short biography of Hildegard Peplau

Hildegard Peplau was born in the city of Reading, in the state of Pennsylvania, United States, in the year 1909. Her parents were immigrants from Europe, specifically from Germany. This marriage produced six children, of whom Hildegard was second in order of birth.

From an early age, Hildegard Peplau knew that, as a woman, her chances of escaping traditional roles were to be trained in a profession that would allow her to grow, and so she always wanted to be a nurse.. So much so that from an early age she took care of the people around her.

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

Therefore, when she finished her primary and secondary education, she had no doubt about the next step she was going to take in her life: she would become a nurse. To do so, she attended nursing school at Pottstown Hospital in Pennsylvania, the state in which she lived. The year was 1931. Once she completed her studies, she began working at that hospital and later at a hospital in New York.

She later became a nurse at Bennington College in Vermont. At 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 her work at Bennington with another at the Chestnut Lodge psychiatric hospital, while learning interpersonal psychology.while learning interpersonal psychology from Harry Stack Sullivan.

Nurse during the war

The year was 1943, so World War II was at its height, and many American citizens were forced to enlist or otherwise serve. This was the case of Hildegard Peplau, who had to join the U.S. Army Nurse Corps.

This led to her her temporary transfer to England, where she worked in the 312th Field Hospital.. As the American School of Military Psychiatry was located there, she had the opportunity to meet some of the eminent mental health experts from both England and the United States.

During her stay at this military hospital, she met a psychiatrist with whom she would have a daughter, but as he was married, Hildegard Peplau raised the child as a single mother. This was compounded by the death of Hildegard's mother around the same time, which made these years very turbulent for her.

Once back in America, Hildegard Peplau was one of the representatives of mental health professionals who met with the government to try to promote a new law that would ensure the welfare of patients suffering from this type of pathology in the USA. The law was passed in 1946.

Great reputation

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

With an enviable curriculum, she practiced teaching at Teachers College itself and also at Rutgers University, where she remained for two decades, since 1954. She was responsible for training the first generations of students to specialize in psychiatric nursing.

During this period, Hildegard Peplau created much of her work and shared 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 for those nurses who are going to work in the field of psychiatry, as they require very specific protocols.The idea of Hildegard Petite is that nurses need very specific protocols in order to be able to practice with guarantees.

Hildegard Peplau's idea was to achieve a qualitative leap from the style that had been used in psychiatric hospitals, which were basically places where patients were guarded, to change the paradigm towards a center where these people would receive the therapeutic care they needed, and here nurses played a fundamental role.

That's why, organized a summer program that lasted almost two decades and trained a multitude of these professionals, traveling to psychiatric hospitals throughout the United States.. In these sessions, Hildegard Peplau taught her colleagues the proper methodology for treating patients.

She taught them how to conduct individual therapy as well as group and family therapy. She also gave them guidelines for the correct interviewing of patients and other techniques for interpersonal relations that could be of great use to them in their day-to-day work.

An eminent nurse

Hildegard Peplau became a worldwide reference in the world of nursing. So much so that the World Health Organization itself used her consulting services. Likewise, She was regularly contracted by university institutions around the world to give lectures and workshops for nurses and nursing students..

Within the United States, Peplau was the most highly regarded figure when it came to consulting in her field of expertise. As a result, several national organizations relied on her on a regular basis. Some of them were the National Institute of Mental Health or even the Air Force.

Among the positions she held during her career, she was president of the American Nurses Association.. Hildegard Peplau remained an eminent figure in the field until her death at the age of 89 in Sherman Oaks, California, in 1999.

The six-role model

Among all the contributions made by Hildegard Peplau, there is one that stands out in particular, and that 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 stranger role is the first role that the nurse performs, since it is the one that occurs when she has just met the patient and there is not yet a climate of trust between them. between them. At this stage, kindness and respect should prevail.

2. Resource role

Subsequently, 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 the patient's condition. Therefore, the nurse must provide this information in a way that is easy for the other person to understand, adapting to his or her characteristics.and adapted to his or 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/she is admitted. Therefore, she must adapt her language, as in the previous role, to transmit this knowledge in a simple and understandable way.

4. Counselor role

But these are not the only roles. Hildegard Peplau states that the nurse is also a counselor, a quality that is especially important in the field of psychiatry.She sometimes has to guide patients and help them understand what is going on.

5. Substitute role

A good nurse also acts as a substitute for people who were important to the inmate in the past but are no longer there. The nurse will become the reference figure for the patients, so they will be essential people in their day-to-day life. This must be understood by the professional.

6. Leader role

The last of the roles that Hildegard Peplau presents in her model is that of leader. Leadership should be a quality for nurses working in the psychiatric area, as they are a key element in ensuring that patients achieve the objectives that have been established according to their pathology, with a view to achieving a better quality of life. according to their pathology, in order to achieve 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.