“Fairman writes an impressive history of nurse practitioners - an eminently readable and scholarly critique of how nursing changed and adapted to society, politics and economics from the 1960s through the 1980s."
-Sandra B. Lewenson, EdD, RN, FAAN, Professor of Nursing, Lienhard School of Nursing, Pace University

"Fairman addresses critical issues that are relevant to the nursing and medical professions today and provides a much-needed history of the nurse practitioner movement."
-Arlene W. Keeling, Centennial Distinguished Professor of Nursing, University of Virginia, Director of the Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry, and President, AAHN

"Making Room in the Clinic provides a nuanced and sophisticated historical analysis of the rise of nurse practitioners, focusing on how a shift in proactice politics and clinical thinking was created.  Fairman suggests ways why, for many of us, the best doctor in our future may indeed be a nurse.  Given our current primary care crisis, this is a must read for anyone who cares about the present and future of American health care."-Susan M. Reverby, Women's Studies Department, Wellesley College

"Julie Fairman's robust defense of nurse practitioners could not be more timely.  As the US debates how to provide millions of uninsured Americans with health care the greatest challenge will be to determine how to provide services and make sure they are safe and of high quality.  This detailed history highlights the complexities involved in responding to that challenge."-Suzanne Gordon, co-author of Safety in Numbers: Nurse-to-Patient Ratios and the Future of Health Care

For years, nurses expanded their practice boundaries to meet their patients' needs, both with and without physician consent. But during the 1960s and 1970s, their level of recognition and authority changed dramatically. Today, nurse practitioners hold graduate degrees in a clinical specialty and are responsible for an enormous range of services from delegated medical regimens to independent care provision in hospitals and clinics. They provide primary health care to a range of clients along a scale from healthy to chronically ill and from wealthy to poor and uninsured.

In Making Room in the Clinic, Julie Fairman examines the context in which the nurse practitioner movement emerged, how large political and social movements influenced it, and how it contributed to the changing definition of medical care. Drawing on a wealth of primary source material, including interviews with key figures in the movement, Fairman describes how this evolution helped create an influential foundation for health policies that emerged at the end of the twentieth century, including health maintenance organizations, a renewed interest in health awareness and disease prevention, and consumer-based services.

Julie Fairman is an associate professor and the director of the University of Pennsylvania Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, a registered nurse, and a fellow of the American Academy of Nurses.