what is meaning of nursing history

The History of Nursing

It could be said that nursing is as old as mankind since people have always needed nursing care when ill or wounded. The word nurse is derived from the Anglo-French nurice and the Latin nutrica , both of which mean nourish. This is exactly what nurses have always done.

The common belief is that nursing has always been a feminine occupation with males entering the field in recent years, but this is not the case. During the Middle Ages, nurses were mostly untrained women who helped deliver babies or were wet nurses. Nuns had more training and cared for the sick. However, by the 13th through the 16th centuries, religious orders felt as if it was their duty to care for the physical needs of people as well as their spiritual needs and formed brotherhoods to carry out this mission. In 1259, the Alexian Brothers started the ministry of caring for the sick and hungry, and they are still in existence today in many countries, including the United States. The Hospitaller Brothers of St. John of God was formed in Spain in 1550. From 1550 through 1614, Saint Camillus de Lellis cared for the sick and dying at St. James’ Hospital in Rome. It was not until 1633 when Saint Vincent de Paul founded the Daughter of Charity that women began to play a larger role in organized nursing. In 1645, Jeanne Mance, a nurse from France, established the Hotel-Dieu de Montreal in Canada, the first hospital in North America.

By the 18th century, the United States was beginning to realize the need for organized nursing services. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond opened Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation’s first hospital. It served the poor and homeless in Philadelphia. When the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, Congress recruited nurses to care for the sick and wounded. They requested one nurse for every 10 patients.

Throughout the years, wars have increased the need for nurses and have had a great influence on the evolution of nursing.  Florence Nightingale , who is widely regarded as the mother of modern nursing, made her greatest impact when she served in the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856. Her sanitation efforts dropped the mortality rate dramatically. She went on to establish the Florence Nightingale School for Nurses in London. Between 1861 and 1865, over 2000 nurses served in the Civil War, some on the front lines. Many of these nurses wrote of their war experiences.

As the United States continued to see the need for nursing education, the first training school was opened 1872 at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. Its first graduate was Linda Richards , the first American trained nurse. After that, more and more hospitals opened nursing schools. Unfortunately, in many of the schools, the training consisted of very little book learning, and many times the students were exploited as free labor. Contrary to the autonomous Nightingale schools, nursing was under the control of medicine.

By the 1970s, the three-year, hospital-based diploma schools were starting to be replaced by two-year associate degree programs at technical schools or by four-year Bachelor of Science degree programs at universities. These schools provide the academic curricula and are affiliated with hospitals for clinical training. As the need for higher education in nursing is growing, universities also are offering master’s and doctorate programs.

The following nursing timeline shows how world events and famous nurses influenced nursing history and paved the way for modern nursing practice.

• 1751 – The first hospital was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• 1775 to 1783 – Nurses were recruited to care for the wounded under the command of George Washington.
• 1783 – James Derham used his earnings from nursing to buy his freedom from slavery.
• 1841 – Dorothea Dix advocated for the mentally ill and established mental institutions.
• 1853 to 1856 – Florence Nightingale served in the Crimean War and set up a holistic system of nursing.

• 1860 – The Florence Nightingale School of Nursing was opened in London.
• 1861 – Nurses began to wear uniforms.
• 1861 to 1865 – During the Civil War, over 2,000 nurses cared for injured and ill soldiers.
• 1865 – Sojourner Truth cared for injured African-American soldiers in Washington, D.C. Her sanitation practices reduced infections, and she taught other nurses her principles.
• 1873 – Linda Richards, the first American trained nurse, graduated from the New England Hospital for Women and Children School of Nursing.
• 1879 – Mary Eliza Mahoney , the first African-American trained nurse, graduated from the New England Hospital School of Nursing.
• 1881 – Clara Barton established the American Red Cross.
• 1893 – Lillian Wald founded the Visiting Nurse Service of New York.

• 1901 – New Zealand began requiring registration for nurses.
• 1902 – Ellen Dougherty from New Zealand became the first registered nurse in the world.
• 1902 – Lina Rogers Struthers was hired as the first public school nurse.
• 1908 – Congress established the United States Naval Nursing Corps.
• 1908 – The National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses was established. It merged with the American Nurses Association in 1951.
• 1914 to 1918 – Nurses from the U.S. Navy Nursing Corps and the American Red Cross served in World War I.
• 1917 – Margaret Sanger established the National Birth Control League that later became Planned Parenthood.
• 1925 – The Frontier Nursing Service was started by Mary Breckinridge.
• 1939 to 1945 – Over 59,000 American nurses served in World War II.
• 1950 – The first intensive care units were established and created the specialty of critical care nursing.
• 1956 – Columbia University School of Nursing offered the first master’s program for nurses.
• 1959 to 1975 – Over 5,000 nurses served during the war.
• 1965 – The University of Colorado established the first nurse practitioner program.
• 1967 – Dame Cicely Saunders started the first hospice in London and provided the foundation for care of the terminally ill.
• 1972 – Eddie Bernice Johnson was the first registered nurse elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
• 1979 – Case Western Reserve University started the first doctoral program for nurses.
• 1990 – Nursing uniforms become more casual. Nurses in hospital settings began to wear “scrubs”.

• 2010 – The Institute for the Future of Nursing released recommendations for improved health care.

Nursing in the past laid the framework for the common purpose of health and well-being of individuals and communities. Nursing theories and processes have changed over the years, but the goal of nursing today remains the same.

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The Origins and Meaning of Nursing

Even in the early cradles of civilization, societies used nursing to care for the sick. However, what began as a caretaker role born out of religious duty and charity, transformed over centuries to encompass highly specialized skills used in leadership positions to shape society wellness.

Today, the centuries of progress in the field culminate to help graduate students achieve  online Master’s in Nursing  through the same superior evidence-based practice found in the campus classroom. And with the fusion of  Nursing Management & Executive Leadership specialization  through the digital medium, the online MSN is the next evolutionary step in nursing.

Nursing in the Bible and Middle Ages

If today’s nurses represent a highly sophisticated model of patient diagnosis, treatment and care, antiquity’s earliest nurses formed a simple sketch of a caretaker.

Phoebe  was the first nurse mentioned in the Holy Bible. Commissioned by St. Paul as a deaconess serving the church, Phoebe is said to have exemplified early Christian ideals of charity and selflessness. She gave care to sick strangers, orphans and travelers under her own roof.

Other deacons and deaconesses followed in Phoebe’s footsteps. Religious servants of convents and monasteries established some of the first hospitals.

The  Hotel Dieu in Paris , dating to 651 A.D. offered shelter and care by Augustinian nuns. A diagnostic process was non-existent for these nurses. It was not uncommon to find six patients in every bed. Patients with communicable diseases mingled with those who had physical ailments like broken limbs.

Nursing in The Protestant Reformation

As European society grew disillusioned with the Church, power shifted away from religious figures and settled on monarchies. In the 16th century,  Henry VIII disbanded convents and monasteries , which directly impacted the era’s hospitals.

Women of lower socioeconomic status unsuitable for other work replaced nuns and monks in hospitals. Patient care experienced setbacks because many of these women were forced into unwanted caretaker positions for which they were not qualified.

Nursing in the 19th Century

Elizabeth fry.

Nursing took a major progressive step in the 19th century when Quaker philanthropist  Elizabeth Fry  spearheaded legislation reform for prisons and hospitals.

Bearing witness to deplorable conditions, Fry went on to found a nursing school in England, the Protestant Sisters of Charity. It was devoted to improving standards of care as well as the patient environment for every sick individual.

Fry’s charitable influence extended to Germany, where Lutheran pastor  Thedor Fliedner  established a deaconess training school and hospital in Kaiserwerth. The efforts at Kaiserwerth combined nursing principles with Christian teachings.

Florence Nightingale

Born into a highly educated, wealthy British family in 1820,  Florence Nightingale  shunned the traditional female role of the Victorian era to dedicate her life to nursing. A trip to Fliedner’s Kaiserwerth hospital gave her a foundation in patient care experience.

When the Crimean War erupted in 1854, Nightingale offered her services to England’s War Office to help decrease the mortality rate of British soldiers who were as vulnerable to death off the battlefield as much as they were on it.

Nightingale headed to Crimea with 38 nurses. Her efforts helped solider deaths dramatically plummet. Nightingale’s impact on the war field enhanced her political influence to help her found a school of nursing at St. Thomas Hospital in London.

Nightingale wrote and published the influential  Notes on Nursing  in 1860, which placed a great focus on the quality of patient care, including the importance of cleanliness and observation practices.

Nursing in The American Civil War

When the Civil War broke out in the 1860s, female nurses broke gender barriers by working outside the home to provide critical medical service on the front lines. A new generation of nurses was born, including Dorothea Dix, Jane Woolsey, Kate Cummings and Clara Barton.

Barton founded the  American Red Cross , which to this day provides emergency supplies and medical services in times of disaster. Barton demonstrated the idea that nursing is not simply about bedside care, but that a nurse can be a leader in rallying staff and implementing change in organizations.

In Barton’s footsteps, a modern framework for nursing emerged, guided by new nurse training programs. The  Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia  opened as the nation’s first nurse training school in 1872. That same year, the New England Hospital for Women and Children was established.

The New England program had the first official nursing graduate in the United States— Linda Richards . Following graduation, Richards went on to establish training programs nationwide and globally.

Nursing in World War II and Beyond

World War II is considered another turning point for nurses. No longer bound by the stringent rules they previously followed as caretakers or maids, nurses helped patients and hospital staff in new ways. They became bedside decision-makers in care and diagnosis. Congress underscored their importance by subsidizing a federal nurse education program in 1943.

In the 1960s, the concept of nurses with advanced skills, or  nurse practitioners, began to take shape . In the face of rising physician shortages and booming patient costs, these nurses conducted studies to attempt to prove their value to the health care community.

A  1994 New England Journal of Medicine study  asserted that care provided by nurse practitioners is equal or superior to that of physicians, validating the importance of the role.

Nursing Today

History reveals a remarkable transformation in nursing. Created out of necessity and charity, nurses have been able to carry the domesticated ideals of compassion and respect for human life throughout the centuries while shattering gender boundaries.

Once a passive role of service, improvement in patient care and quality necessitated nurses to take active involvement in the health care of society. Today, these added responsibilities are an integral part of MSN programs. A  master’s in nursing  allows graduates to become vocal partners with physicians, develop the business acumen to maintain quality in all facets of a health care setting and train future generations of nurses.

Representing society’s biggest patient advocates, nurses can use continuing education through the online medium to fully enrich areas of specialization that will benefit the patients of tomorrow.

Sacred Heart University  is an accredited institution of higher learning which promotes spiritual and ethical values and rejoices in learning and discovery. The many programs that are offered strive to prepare students to make meaningful contributions to the world.

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