History of Nursing (Essay Sample)

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Since the beginning of the world, people have cared for their loved ones during sickness. The nursing profession and the art of caring for sick people are integrated. Nurses jumped many huddles and confronted many problems before the world came to recognize their profession as an autonomous one with its own unique knowledge. The following essay is about the development and evolution of nursing as a profession from the time of Florence Nightingale.
Florence Nightingale, born in Italy, is the founder of professional nursing in Britain (Seymar, 1960). Her contribution to professional nursing was significant during the Crimean war in 1854. She facilitated cleaning, scrubbing of the hospitals, and encouraged free flow of air into the hospital. Her contribution to reduction of mortalities in the British troops made her a hero in Britain. In honor of her contribution to the war, the British people set up a trust fund in her name, which she used to start the first formal training school in Britain called the Nightingales school of nursing at the St Thomas Hospital in London (Seymar, 1960). The instructors in her school guided the students learning using a curriculum that included theory and clinical experiences (Seymar, 1960).
Due to the schools success, many social reformers in America requested her to send them a trained nurse to set up a nursing school in their countries. In 1872, the Women’s hospital of Philadelphia became the first permanent institution to start training nurses in America. In 1873 many more schools came up including, Bellevue Hospital Training School in New York City, Boston Training School in Massachusetts Hospital and the Connecticut hospital of New Haven.
When the civil war broke out in America, there was no provision for military nurses (Larson, 1997). At that time, there were no trained nurses nor nursing schools. During the war, there were about 3000 nurse’s volunteers (Larson, 1997). However, these nurses were not trained professionals but rather female relatives of the injured or women from catholic churches who remained to take care of the injured soldiers. The civil war laid the foundation for professional nursing in America (Larson, 1997).
The nurses, who had cared for the sick during the war, realized the value of a formal education for nurses. The community also came to appreciate the work nurses did during the war (Larson, 1997). A few years after the end of the war, the head of the American Medical Association, Samuel Gross endorsed the formation of training schools for nursing (Larson, 1997).
The concern for licensure in the late 19th century to distinguish the educated nurses from the informal ones led to the “formation of the Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada, which later became the American Nurses Association” (Mason, Isaacs, & Colby, 2011). Later on, nurses in America formed the National League for Nursing to promote the educational standards for nursing.
In mid-1960s, the American Nurses Association published a position paper that proposed the minimum entry level of professional nurses should be a degree (Mason, Isaacs, & Colby, 2011). Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the number of nurses enrolling for baccalaureate programs and schools offering the same remained few. Nurses were uncertain of the new programs, and the lecturers did not have the essential skills and knowledge to train others (Mason, Isaacs, & Colby, 2011).
In the early twentieth century, individual states started passing nursing practice acts that regulated training and education of nurses. The first states in America to form state nursing organizations to facilitate enacting of the nursing practice act included, Illinois, New York Virginia and New Jersey. By 1921, forty-eight states of America had passed laws that regulated professional nursing.
In the beginning of the twentieth century, Goldmark Report of 1923 and Burgess report of 1928 proposing that nurses should train in the universities (Pavey, 1953). After world war two, there was an acute shortage of nurses, which prompted the recruitment of men and married women into nursing. The technological advances of the midcentury increased the demand for baccalaureate nursing programs in the Universities (Pavey, 1953). Mildred Montag, in her dissertation, suggested the introduction of an Associate degree in nursing to cover the nursing shortage (Pavey, 1953).
The master’s degree programs expanded the roles of nurses. With the programs, nurses were able to specialize in new advanced practice roles. Some of the roles include clinical specialist, n...