Nursing - History

History

Before the foundation of modern nursing, nuns and the military often provided nursing-like services.

The religious and military roots of modern nursing remain in evidence today in many countries, for example in the United Kingdom, senior female nurses are known as sisters. Nurses execute the "Orders" of other health care professionals in addition to being responsible for their own practice.

The first known Nurse, Phoebe, was mentioned in Romans 16:1. During the early years of the Christian Church, St. Paul sent a deaconess Phoebe to Rome as the first visiting nurse. She took care of both women and men.

The Crimean War was a significant development in nursing history, when English nurse Florence Nightingale, laid the foundations of professional nursing with the principles summarised in the book Notes on Nursing.

Other important nurses in the development of the profession include:

• Mary Seacole, who also worked as a nurse in the Crimea
• Agnes Elizabeth Jones and Linda Richards, who established quality nursing schools in the USA and Japan; Linda Richards was officially America's first professionally trained nurse, graduating in 1873 from the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston
• Clarissa Harlowe "Clara" Barton, a pioneer American teacher, patent clerk, nurse, and humanitarian, and the founder of the American Red Cross.

New Zealand was the first country to regulate nurses nationally, with adoption of the Nurses Registration Act on the 12 September 1901. It was here in New Zealand that Ellen Dougherty became the first registered nurse. North Carolina was the first state in the United States to pass a nursing license law in 1903. In the 1990s nurses became able to prescribe medications, order diagnostic and pathology tests and refer patients to other health professionals as needed. Reference Potter & Perrys (2009)

Nurses in the United States Army actually started during the Revolutionary War when a general suggested to George Washington that the he needed female nurses "to attend the sick and obey the matron's orders. In July 1775, a plan was submitted to the Second Continental Congress that provided one nurse for every ten patients and provided that a matron be allotted to every hundred sick or wounded".

Nurses have experienced difficulty with the hierarchy in medicine that has resulted in an impression that nurses' primary purpose is to follow the direction of physicians. This tendency is certainly not observed in Nightingale's Notes on Nursing, where the physicians are mentioned relatively infrequently, and often in critical tones—particularly relating to bedside manner.

In the early 1900s, the autonomous, nursing-controlled, Nightingale era schools came to an end – schools became controlled by hospitals, and formal "book learning" was discouraged. Hospitals and physicians saw women in nursing as a source of free or inexpensive labor. Exploitation was not uncommon by nurse’s employers, physicians and educational providers. Nursing practice was controlled by medicine.

The modern era has seen the development of nursing degrees and nursing has numerous journals to broaden the knowledge base of the profession. Nurses are often in key management roles within health services and hold research posts at universities.