History of Nursing

economic aid for has been called the oldest of artistrys and the youngest of professions (Donahue, 1996). In ancient periods because of maternal instinct women were considered born nurses. They cared for their own family and learn their daughters and other women in their community in the procedures in which they specialized. In the 16th century the meanings nurse included a person, or a woman who waits upon or tends to the down in the m step for holdh. During the 19th century, treat was considered training of those who tend to the sick and carrying out duties infra forethought of a physician (Donahue, 1996). Today, nursing has become both an art and a science.It focuses on health promotion, professionalism, skills, knowledge and education. It is now a occupational group of all genders and races and one of the highest growing professions in the United States. To understand how nursing has arrived we must first review where nursing has come from. In this musical theme you wi ll learn about nursing before Florence Nightingale, the reforms that Florence made that pitchd nursing as a profession, and Innovations in nursing as it continue to evolve. Nursing has its origins in Christianity. According to Joyce (2002), some of the earliest nurses and singles who ran hospitals were Catholic nuns and monks.Deacons and deaconesses of the church were trained as nurses and went out into the community to provide nursing care. In the 1840s, nursing- sisterhoods were founded to breach standards of nursing in Britain (Joyce, 2002). This organization was of the Catholic nursing order. According to Joyce (2002), St. Johns mob was an Anglican Nursing Sisterhood founded in 1848, it provided nurses to care for the sick in their own syndicates. This is considered one of the first training schools. They trained nurses for private sour tho they gained experience in hospital wards (Joyce, 2002).In the 17th and eighteenth century, the infirmaries were local houses used for providing employment for the destitute. During this time most people who call for nursing were nursed at home. Those who were non nursed at home ended up in workhouses, with primitive wards, for the sick and infirm. Some of the sometime(a) hospitals were rebuilt frequently by private benefactors (Grell, 1997). They appointed private contractors who looked after the parishs poor. The individuals would thusly be employed and in return would receive board and lodging. The infirmaries were often filled with patient roles from the hospitals who could not be cured.They became so bad that only those who had resigned themselves to stopping point would stay. Usually the infirmary was a freezing cold and draughty room. thither were iron beds with thin mattresses, the only furniture in the room. The sick were not cared for properly, the volunteer hospitals were unable to cope with the increasing population and there were no facilities for training nurses ( french and Wear, 1991). The gr owth of the 18th century brought overcrowding in the cities which increased the feast of disease. The building of railways in the vicinity led to the admission of many solidus cases and often to a rise in the sepsis dictate.Due to the overcrowding in hospitals bedsores, malnutrition, and infections were occasional occurrences (Grell, 1997). Nurses were seen differently during the eighteenth century. They were not perceived as medical practitioners but as domestic servants. According to Grell (1997), nurses were inferior largely because nursing was historically subservient roles before the 1800s. The people staffed as nurses were traditionally convicts, widows, and orphans in supersede for food and shelter. Nurses were poorly trained, poorly paid, and the ill were cruelly treated and ill-treat and neglected (Grell, 1997).Charles Dickens novel, The Life and Adventures of Marin Chuzzlewit, tells of Sarah Gamp, a fictional nurse portrayed as an alcoholic who is a nurse midwife an d layer out of the dead. She enjoys all of the hospitality given to her with no regard to the individuals to which she is hired to care for. According to the story nurses were ignorant, drunk, and lazy (Dickens, 2011). Although nursing care reform was a concern there were definite issues such as pay, workload, and recruiting quality individuals. The panic of nurse values arose concerning nursing care of the sick, so did the push for change in the quality of nurse selection.The domestic organization was under the direction of a Matron, recruited from a higher order of society and paid tally to the position. Nurses were appointed by matrons who tried to find women of good character. According to french and Wear, in 1845 the matron of the Middlesex told the weekly board how she chose nurses. They should be between 30 and 45 years of age, strong, healthy, unmarried and unencumbered with children. They should be accustomed to nursing, able to take aim and write, humane, honest, sober and clean in their work and person (French and Wear, 1991, 268).The nature and duties of patient care also was re-evaluated. The duties concerning patient care were the manual tasks of administering food and medicine, ever-changing linen and emptying bedpans, and they also did the basic hospital cleaning (French and Wear, 1991). compensation being low, recruitment was difficult and many nurses were discharged for taking bribes or rollicking with the patients. The ward sisters, were principal nurses in immediate personal result on patients they played the key role. They were responsible to the matron and the steward for everything within the ward which was not a matter for the medical staff.They received differential rate of pay as senior nurses or sisters, typically in the weave of five to ten pounds per annum 11 (French and Wear, 1991). By day the nurses performed domestic duties and administered to the wants of the patients. At night watchers of a yet start class supervised t he wards, art the sister who slept nearby if there was an important change in the checker of a patient. If watchers lay down or slept they were instantly discharged. The wages were alike(p) with the wages of a domestic servant and in certain areas lower (French and Wear, 1991).Reform took its shape in areas of parliament and government concerning wages. According to French and Wear (1991), many nurses required the sick or dying individual to pay them money before they would administer any care. This had become problematic, the princely Infirmary Governor pushed to raise the wage for nurses. This wage increase would come to the nurse to discontinue this practice and was used to recruit and retain better nurses who took pride in their appearance and character. The change in recruitment dodging was to recruit women from a higher social class (French and Wear, 1991).