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If you think of a woman dressed in scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck and a clipboard in her hands, you aren’t alone. An overwhelming majority of nurses in the United States today are women. However, nursing began as a practice reserved for men. The first nursing school was established in India in about 250 B.C., and only men were permitted to attend because men were viewed to be more pure than women.
It wasn’t until the 1800's that nursing became an organized practice. During the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale and 38 volunteer nurses were sent to the main British camp in Turkey. Nightingale and her staff immediately began to clean the hospital and equipment and reorganized patient care. Nightingale pushed for reform of hospital sanitation methods and invented methods of graphing statistical data. When she returned to Britain, Nightingale aided in the establishment of the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army. As a woman, Nightingale could not be appointed to the Royal Commission, but she composed the Commission’s report. Completed, the report was over 1,000 pages in length and included detailed statistical information. Nightingale’s work led to drastic changes in army medical care, the establishment of an Army Medical School and medical records, and ignited the growth of nursing as an organized profession. For these contributions, Nightingale is widely accepted as the founder of nursing.
In the early 1900's, nursing education was received primarily from hospitals rather than colleges or universities. New nursing students were responsible for tasks similar to that of maids – dusting, scrubbing and doing dishes. These students typically worked 10 to 12 hour shifts, seven days a week, for a period of two to three years. Later responsibilities included sterilization of equipment such as needles and bandages and cleaning operating rooms. After graduating, most worked in patient homes as private-duty nurses and were paid amounts comparable to today’s minimum wage. Their duties included bathing, administration of medications and enemas, and tending to wounds and sores.
During this time period, hospitals evolved from facilities for the extremely poor and death-bound to institutions for general health treatment and childbirth. At the dawn of World War II, nurses were removed from their familiar hospital environment and placed at the bedsides of wounded soldiers, responsible for treatment decisions for the first time. To ensure adequate nursing staff for the duration of the war, the Cadet Nurse Corps program was initiated in 1943 to subsidize education for nursing students who agreed to work in the understaffed areas until the war’s end. Well over 100,000 nurses received training through this program over the next three years. The nursing profession gained much recognition and support from civilians during this time, at long last realized as the tremendous asset to medical care that nurses truly are.
Nurses returned from duty with public support as well as new skills from the training and experience gained during service. Many nurses had been trained by the military in specialty areas of medicine, expanding nursing into areas of medicine such as psychiatry and anesthesia. In the years that followed, the government invested tremendous sums of money into the health care profession. That combined with the nation’s booming economy and the discovery of antibiotics such as penicillin to treat infections created a high demand for skilled, educated nurses. As pharmaceutical advancements continued, more invasive surgeries that were previously considered far too risky were made possible, opening even more opportunities to nurses in the field of surgery. Soon, medical machinery was operable by nurses, who became increasingly more and more responsible for the direct care of patients.
In the 1980's, a serious shortage of nurses across the country prompted the development of the travel nursing industry. Travel nursing began as a short-term solution to meet nurse staffing needs, particularly in states such as Arizona and California where seasonal turnover of population is high due to tourism. It was soon realized that traveling nurses offered an exceptional solution to ongoing staffing needs at facilities across the nation. Countless travel nursing agencies have since emerged, making thousands of positions available to qualified nurses across the country.
Whether or not they choose to travel, nurses today are responsible for many aspects of patients’ care, including assisting in diagnoses, creating care plans and educating patients about procedures. With over 200 specialty areas of nursing for Registered Nurses in the United States today, opportunities available within this field are nearly endless. Duties and responsibilities vary within each specialty, but all are guided by local, state and federal laws, as well as ethical codes.
The explosion of new and improved medical technology and knowledge will undoubtedly provide even more opportunities for nurses. Today’s demand for skilled nurses significantly outweighs the supply of such professionals. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook, employment for Registered Nurses is expected to experience a growth of 27% or more by the year 2014, placing nurses among the most demanded professionals in the country.
