Physics in Nursing and the Allied Health Sciences

Rod had initiated a course called Physics for Nursing and the Allied Health Sciences at Georgia State University and had been teaching it since about 1972. He had initiated the course in response to requests by the Nursing Department, but it was also taken by a number of students in Physical Therapy at Georgia State. The only reasonable text found was a survey book by Flitter, but Rod almost immediately began working toward a text to cover the material needed by nurses. Brenda had a much clearer perspective about what subjects were needed by nurses, so she was quickly brought in as co-author. She not only help select topics, but in her employment as a Registered Nurse at Georgia Baptist Hospital, she interacted with a lot of doctors and could get their suggestions.

Rod had been on the faculty at the then "Georgia State College" since 1968 and had been teaching all the basic physics material that seemed appropriate for nurses and other health professionals. It was his habit to do a lot of sketching on the chalkboard so he had a large collection of sketches he had done in preparation for teaching. So he and Brenda began writing the text material. We had a drawing board at home, and Rod had a lot of experience in graphics, so he began drawing the illustrations for the text with ink on mylar, which could then be reproduced photographically for good quality in publication. He produced about 160 illustrations in ink on mylar in about 18 months. In 1973 we published a spiral-bound text "Physics in Nursing and the Allied Health Sciences". It was published by the Physics Department of Georgia State University.

Our textbook served well and the enrollment of the course for nurses was increasing. During the years it was taught it peaked at about three hundred nurses a year. Our self-produced textbook caught the attention of a publishers representative from W. B. Saunders Co., Wally Shows, and he began to talk with me about publishing a text with them for nurses and the broader allied health market. That led to be publication of "Physics for the Health Sciences" in 1975.