Historical Developments in Nursing essays

Historical Developments in Nursing essays Nursing research and nursing research utilization-A historical overview Nursing began as a relatively undefined profession. A nurse was once a doctors helper at best, or even a mere tender of children in some uses of the world, like the nursemaid who was the nanny of a Victorian home. As the demands of modern warfare and the institutionalization of the 19th century hospital environment began to place additional demands upon the medical profession, more and more women sought to become nurses as a calling, not merely as a way of making money in one of the few suitably feminine occupations open to women. Over the course of the 20th and now the 21st century, nursing has become a more scientifically respected profession, and the unique ability of nurses to be both caring as well as psychologically and scientifically astute observers of a patients condition has made nursing a respected profession, and allowed nurses to make a vital contribution to modern healthcare. First Key Event: Nursing Becomes a Profession When Florence Nightingale informed her parents that she wanted to become a nurse, her parents were totally opposed to the idea as nursing was associated with working class women (Florence Nightingale, 2004, Cybernurse). Nightingale persevered and sought training. Towards the end of her education, in March of 1853, the Crimean War broke out. Soon after British soldiers arrived in Turkey, nearly 8,000 Englishmen were suffering from malaria, dysentery, or cholera. Nightingale volunteered to take a group of thirty-eight nurses to help her countrymen. The military hospitals left the soldiers in unwashed, filthy uniforms, and were breeding grounds of disease. During these early formative experiences Nightingale began to create what later she later called canons of nursing, as described in her works Notes on Hospital (1859) and Notes on Nursing (1859). These canons detailed the prop...