Question

How has nursing practice evolved over time? Discuss the key leaders and historical events that have influenced the advancement of nursing, nursing education, and nursing roles that are now part of the contemporary nursing profession.

Answer 1

How Nursing Has Changed Over Time?

The advancements in technology have created an environment that makes patient care more efficient and helpful for the patient. The changes in training, health care setting, growing responsibilities, nursing culture, and patient care have saved countless lives and helped it become the respected field it is today.

When nursing began it had very little to do with formal medical training and everything to do with your gender and willingness to do the job. In the early days of nursing, women learned medical skills from their mothers or other women in the same profession. It wasn't really seen as a respected trade, but women weren't really seen as a respecteble gender, either. Women were caretakers, so nursing was just an extension of what their roles at home were anyway. Today, the nursing programs, more diversified staff, and a level of prestige associated with this area of the medical field that wasn't there before.

Time has done a lot for many career paths, but the nursing field has seen drastic changes to help the efficiency of medical care. There are more training programs, better hospitals, more responsibility, a sense of family, and a focus on patient care in the nursing industry that has saved lives and created generations of dedicated medical professionals.

The key leaders and historical events that have influenced the advancement of nursing, nursing education and nursing roles that are now part of the contemporary nursing profession:

The history of nursing used to be part and parcel of most nursing programs. However, due to a plethora of changes in health care, nursing, and technology, there is little room to include this important content. Today, many nursing programsprovide a brief overview of nursing's rich history because the curriculum is overladen with content. Most historians concur that learning about one's past history provides one with a greater understanding and appreciation of the issues that inform their current and future practice and policies. The history of the nursing profession is closely intertwined with health care, medicine, society, and public policy. We can see a reciprocal influential relationship between current events and the role of the nurse. Throughout the years nurses have played a pivotal role in the health and welfare of the population across the lifspan, and around the world. Recognizing the significance of the past on our current and future profession, the American Association for the History of Nursing advocates for the inclusion of nursing history in nursing curricula.

Professional nursing holds a unique place in the American health care system. working independently and with other health care professionals, nurses promote the health of individuals, families, and communities. Nurses are critical links in maintaining a cutting-edge health care system. Nursing continues to be an indispensable service to the American public. School nurses have a long history of providing health services to school children from kindergarten through high school. Nurses play a major role in delivering care to those residing in long-term-care facilities such as nursing homes.

Florence Nightingle

Most people think of the nursing profession as beginning with the work of Florence Nightingle, an upper class British woman who captured in public imagination when she led a group of female nurses to the Crimea in October of 1854 to deliver nursing service to British soldiers. Upon her return to England, Nightingale successfully established nurse education programs in a number of British hospitals. These schools were organised around a specific set of ideas about how nurses should be educated, developed by Nightingale often referrred to as "Nightingale Principles".

The Beginnings of Nurse Education

Recognizing the importance of good nursing care to a patient's well-being, some physicians initiated courses for those interested in nursing. In 1798 Vlentine Seaman, a New York physician, organized an early courses of lectures for nurses who cared for maternity patients. An early nineteenth-century program, the Nurse society of Philadelphia (also reffered to as the Nurse Charity of Philadelphia) trained women in caring for mothers during childbirth and postpartum period.

The Profession of Nursing Organizes

As the number of nurses grew in the late nineteenth century, nursing took on the rudimentary characteristics of a profession. In the 1890s, nurses organized two mjor professional associations: the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses, later renamed the National League of Nursing Education, and the Associatd Alumnae of the United States, later renamed the American Nurses Association. Other major organizations, such as the National Association of Colored Grduate Nurses and the National Organization for Public Health Nursing formed in the early twentieth century. State nurses associations also organized and were instrumental in passing state nurse registration acts which regulated and provided a licensing system for nursing practice.