There have always been people here who need care because of physical or mental problems. Nursing stemmed from a tradition of caring and was often performed by women for sick and injured family members or people without relatives (Egenes, 2017). However, the role of a nurse was also performed by men with a semi-religious and semi-healer social status in some communities (Egenes, 2017). At the dawn of Christianity, paradigmatic change happened in the profession. Christian nurses began to form “themselves into organized groups” (Egenes, 2017, p. 2). One of the early initiators of the change and the leader, deaconess, of one such group was St. Phoebe (Khoury, n.d.). Historians believe she also was the first visiting nurse (Egenes, 2017). She and many other early Christian nurses laid the foundation for the entire nursing organizational model and infrastructure.
Two events in the 19th century and the people involved transformed nursing into what people now understand by the term. These are the Crimean War in Russia and the Civil War in the United States (US). When the Crimean War began, Florence Nightingale, an upper-class nurse who had devoted herself from an early age to caring for others, went to help the British soldiers (Egenes, 2017). She was shocked by the high death rate of the British Army. There she gained a unique nursing experience and, upon her return to England, “she established the Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas’ Hospital” (Egenes, 2017, p. 5). Nowadays, “Florence Nightingale is considered a significant figure and the founder of modern nursing” (Florence Nightingale, n.d., para. 4). Women who volunteered to serve as nurses during the Civil War, such as Mary Ann Bickerdyke and Jane Stuart Woolsey, followed a similar but harsher path because of the lack of nursing education in the US. Many of them founded the first nurse training schools when they returned to civilian life.
The first decades of the 20th century in the United States are characterized by the institutionalization of nursing in health care. During this time, the state and private foundations help the nurse build a nursing network and infrastructure throughout the country (Egenes, 2017). With the rapid technological progress and the expansion of women’s rights after World War II, many nursing roles such as nurse administrator and advanced practice nurse are finally identified and formalized.
References
Egenes, K. J. (2017). History of nursing. In G. Roux & J. A. Halstead (Eds.), Issues and trends in nursing: Essential knowledge for today and tomorrow (pp. 1-26). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Florence Nightingale. (n.d.). The National Archives. Web.
Khoury, M. (n.d.). About St. Phoebe the deaconess. St. Phoebe Center. Web.