History Professional Nursing

863 Words4 Pages
Professional Nursing

Introduction

This paper will give an overview of the introduction to the Nursing profession, Florence Nightingale, and modern medicine. The poor quality of care for the sick in hospitals was identified and the need for qualified Nursing staff recognised. The development of formal education programs for Nursing and care givers was established. Education was seen as an improvement to the practice. Mortality rates were high at the turn of the century. Problems with meningitis, tuberculosis, scarlet fever and other communicable diseases were addressed. The graduate nurse program had begun to develop in hospitals and education facilities to better prepare nurses for these illnesses and more. (Chinn, P 1994)

Body

A woman in medical care (beyond serving as a midwife, sitter or cleaner) was brought about by the likes of Florence Nightingale. These women showed a previously male dominated profession the essential role of nursing in order to lessen the patient mortality rate, which resulted from lack of hygiene and nutrition. Nightingale setup the St Thomas hospital, post Crimea, in 1852. Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) became the first woman to formally study and later practice, medicine in the United States.

The principles of domesticity provided the path of least resistance by which nursing could be recognised as a legitimate occupation for women. In the quest for professionalism, nurses were constantly confronted with conflicting assumptions on which their role was based. While the development of knowledge is an essential task for nursing, the work of historians suggests that professional status is not likely to evolve passively form nursing’s recognition as a scholarly discipline.

It was in that era that actual cures were developed for certain endemic infectious diseases. However the decline in many of the most lethal

More about History Professional Nursing

Open Document