Why I Chose to Be a Nurse

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Why I decided to be a Nurse.
The role and function of nurses have undergone radical metamorphoses within the past two hundred years due in part to the checkered development of the profession. At some point in history, in some primitive communities like Cameroon where i came from, priests, priestesses, and witchdoctors combined prayers, magical incantations, and charms to cure diseases or ward off impending epidemics. Medications comprised of concoctions of plant and animal matter and human parts compounded in witchcraft. Diseases were considered the wrath of the gods or the spell of evil people. Thus, in order to be cured, the patient had to believe in the etiology of the disease and the potency of the concoction. The 19th and 20th Centuries ushered in a new perception of the image of nurses and their status in the community. Advances in education, technology, and warfare gave rise to corresponding needs for modern medicine and the training of personnel to use the new medicines to care for the war wounded, feed the sick, and comfort the dying. Hospitals and advanced forms of patient care and treatment gradually replaced the crude methods of diagnosis and dosage-less administration of mainly-liquid potions. Research-based evidence inspired the need for specialization and the invention of sophisticated instruments to enhance further research into the nature, etiology, epidemiology, economic significance of certain diseases, and the methods of treating, controlling, and preventing them, with emphases on nursing, patient, health, and the environment. To keep pace with these rapid innovations, the definition of nursing has been reformulated several times to reflect the education, role, functions, and importance of nurses. In 1973 for example, the International Council of Nurses (ICN), coined a functional definition of nursing from the beliefs of Virginia Henderson:

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