Nursing Practice Past to Present

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The profession of nursing has a long history of women who have worked hard to help establish and distinguish the role of the nurse from other professions. Practical nursing began during the 1800’s as women relocated from rural settings and moved to urban areas ultimately needing to find work in order to support the urban living lifestyle. Aside from domestic work, she could choose to care for those who were ill. Licensing began with Licensed Practical Nurses (LPN) also known as licensed vocational nurse (LVN). These nurses received their first formal education by the Youth Women’s Christian Assoc. (YWCA). LPN’s were and continue to be knowledgeable on basic patient care, medication administration, and reporting abnormalities promptly to a more educated healthcare professional. Nursing needed to keep pace with the changing times. As knowledge on care of the patient continued to grow, so did the skilled requirements for the nurse. The practice of medicine had expanded its knowledge base on asepsis, ultimately leading to an increase in the amount of hospitals. In order to keep pace, nursing expanded its role on education of the nurse and started the diploma nursing program. This was an apprenticeship based program. This program served the profession of nursing very well until it was observed that the hospital was taking advantage of the diploma nursing students. Administrators of hospitals were placing the student where the hospital needed them the most and not in line with the student’s clinical requirement (Scheckel, 2009). It was determined that more time was needed in order for the nurse to get a thorough education. Nursing can attribute it formal baccalaureate foundation for a nursing education to three research studies. The three studies are The Nuttling report which was published in 1912, the Goldmark report published in 1923, and finally the Burgess report

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