Ok, last I read here, the general ideas were re; the Black and Red jewels revolved around
two "guesses", one that the Black was for normal chart usage and the Red was for corrections
to charts. Another poster here provided some (all too) general info that different pens were
used for different shifts. (This answer actually is VERY close to "the answer", but still "off" as
we are talking about 2 different color inks/jewels and hospitals usually run 3 different shifts.)

My mother is a retired RN. She was capped and pinned at the North Carolina Baptist hospital
in Winston Salem, NC, in 1959 and worked in a ward there before moving to Orlando, FL and
working at Orange Memorial hospital (which later became Orlando Regional Medical Center).

So, I decided to rack her brain and see what she remembered. I sent her the post that had the
nice clear pics of the two Nurses pens, with red ink on the threads of the red jeweled one. Here's
the skinny.

First bit of bad news is that while she had seen those Esties in use, she hadn't used them herself.
Apparently, the "rage" then was the newfangled 4 in 1 ballpoint that you could flip the little doodads
down on for each seperate color refill to be used. That was what she used most of the time she
said. (She said she thought she had one stuck away somewhere and would look for it for me. While
not a real usable pen or collectible, it would be a nice keepsake.)

Those pens had Red, Black, Blue and Green Ink in them. Green and Blue ink were never used on
patients charts.

(drumroll...)

The red ink was used on charts for annotations made between midnight and 7 AM. The black ink was
used for chart annotations made between 7 AM and midnight. Thusly, the pens (inks) could be told
apart without having to remove the caps.

Now this is not to say that there may not have been different usages in other hospitals, but this
is certainly how the two colors were used at this one hospital which being a training hospital, one
might assume would be teaching to "current standards of the time". Also, being a private pilot, I
find this answer reassuring due to the common knowledge that the eye is less reactive to red light
at night and the usage of red ink in a dark ward for clarities sake sounds very plausable to me.

So, there you have it.

Bruce in Ocala, FL

Well that is pretty cool to know! It might of helped to show what meds were given in the AM or PM too.

Er, did you ever look at red ink under a red light? You can't see it. If the nurses were using red lenses in their flashlights in order to keep from disturbing sleeping patients, they would not be able to see what they were writing. And they only read charts out at the desk. The nurse's night vision was shot anyway, moving between darkened (never dark) rooms and brightly lit hallways and nursing station. Plus every nurse's flashlight I ever saw used a white light (my wife got her BSN about thirteen years after your mother, I don't think things changed that much between 1959 and 1972).

My wife is a nurse. She would tell you that the red ink only highlighted the stuff that went on between midnight and 7 am. Made it easier to see whether the nurses on nights were doing what they were supposed to be doing. Also helps the doc sort out any problems that he or she wasn't around to observe.

Bill, et alia:
I maybe the guilty party who mentioned red was the correction pen colour. Seems like I saw it on another site maybe the Estie one. I checked with SWMBO locally, she was capped in 1976 at St. Olaf as a BSN(which she won't let me forget). I can tell you the difference in LVN, LPN, Graduate RN and BSN if awaken from a sound sleep after a 10 day bender, but that's another story for another time. She agrees with the shift description of Pen Ink colours at least till 1980 ish. That's when she got out of Hospital nursing and into CHN/PHN work.. I've been instructed I need to apologize for my previous incorrect, obviously flippant comment , and concur with thiis original poster. I learned that not all I read is accurate, unless it's supported by the in house expert--SWMBO. Jim

I've been through the same training program. Ow.

Wife is home, so I asked her. At her hospital, until 1990, they used black ink for the 7 - 3 shift, green ink for the 3 - 11, and red ink for the 11 - 7. Purely to make it easier to review the charts.

They stopped in 1990 when they started using microfiche to record and store the charts. The red ink didn't show up on the microfiche. Before the hospital closed its doors forever in June, they were using black or blue ballpoint, and it didn't matter about the shift.

Well, I've seen photos of the rare green jeweled nurses pen. So, the different colors - black, red, green - used at different times of day makes sense to my untrained mind.