In earlier centuries, nursing care was usually provided by men and women of various religious orders, who had little or no training. Modern nursing began in the mid-19 th century due to the Nightingale training schools for nurses. In the United States, the Spanish-American War (1898) and World War I (1914-1918) established the need for more nurses. Nursing schools increased their enrollments, and several new programs were developed. After 1920 several university schools of nursing were opened.
World War II (1939-1945) brought about another increased demand for nurses. Technological advances in medicine and health have required nurses to become knowledgeable about sophisticated equipment and a number of medications. The duties of a floor nurse in 1887 is very different than the duties of a floor nurse in this day and age. In addition to caring for your 50 patients, each nurse would follow these specific regulations: 1. Daily sweep & mop the floors of your ward, dust the patient’s furniture & window sills. 2.
Maintain an even temperature in your ward by bringing in a scuttle of coal for the day’s business. 3. Light is important to observe the patient’s condition. Therefore, each day fill kerosene lamps, clean chimneys, and trim wicks. Wash the windows once a week.
4. The nurse’s notes are important in aiding the physician’s work. Make your pens carefully, you may whittle nibs to your individual taste. 5.
Each nurse on day duty will report every day at 7 a. m. and leave at 8 p. m.
, except on the Sabbath on which day you will be off from 12 noon to 2 p. m. 6. Graduate nurses in good standing with the director of nurses will be given an evening off each week if you go regularly to church. 7. Each nurse should lay aside form each pay day a goodly sum of her earnings for her benefits during her declining years, so that she will not become a burden.
For example, if you earn $30 a month you should set aside $15. 8. Any nurse who smokes, uses liquor in any form, gets her hair done at a beauty shop, or frequents dance halls will give the director on nurses good reason to suspect her worth, intentions, and integrity. 9. The nurse who performs her labors, serves her patients and doctors faithfully and without fault for a period of 5 years will be given an increase by the hospital administration of five cents a day providing there are no hospital debts that are outstanding. An expanded role for nurses developed during the 1960 s: the nurse practitioner, who functioned within an area of specialization, performing physical examinations, making diagnoses, and providing services and referrals.
Nursing was the first major professional group to integrate black & white members. The following nurses have contributed much to the medical field. Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), British nurse, hospital reformer, and humanitarian. Born in Florence, Italy, Nightingale was raised mostly in Derbyshire, England. In 1853 she became superintendent of the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen in London. After the Crimean War broke out in 1854, Nightingale volunteered her services.
Under her supervision, efficient nursing departments were established at two sites in Crimea. The mortality rate among the sick and the wounded was then greatly reduced. At the close of the war in 1860, Nightingale founded the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses at Saint Thomas’s Hospital in London. The opening of this school marked the beginning of professional education in nursing. Before she undertook her reforms, nurses were largely untrained personnel who considered their job a menial chore; through her efforts, nursing became a health care profession with high standards of education and important responsibilities.
Clara Harlow e Barton (1821-1912) American humanitarian and founder of the American . Barton was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, December 25, 1821, and educated at home, chiefly by her two brothers and two sisters. She was a teacher at first and the founder of free schools in New Jersey. In 1854 she became a clerk in the Patent Office, Washington, D. C. , but resigned at the start of the American Civil War to work as a volunteer, distributing supplies to wounded soldiers.
After the war she supervised a search for missing soldiers. Between 1869 and 1873 Barton lived in Europe, where she helped establish hospitals during the Franco-Prussian War and was honored with the Iron Cross of Germany. Through Barton’s efforts the American Red Cross Society was formed in 1881; she served as the first president of the organization until 1904. In 1884 she represented the United States at the Red Cross Conference and at the International Peace Convention in Geneva. She was responsible for the introduction at this convention of the “American amendment,” which established that the Red Cross was to serve victims of peacetime disasters as well as victims of war.
She superintended relief work in the yellow-fever pestilence in Florida (1887), in the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood (1889), in the Russian famine (1891), among the Armenians (1896), in the Spanish-American War (1898), and in the South African War (1899-1902). The last work that she personally directed was the relief of victims of the flood at Galveston, Texas, in 1900. She died in Glen Echo, Maryland, on April 12, 1912. She wrote several books on the Red Cross and Story of My Childhood (1907). Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) The founder of the birth control movement. Margaret Sanger was one of eleven children.
Her mother was a Catholic and her father a Freethinker. After her two sisters put her through college, Margaret worked as a school teacher, then attended nursing school. She left school early to marry, and shortly thereafter gave birth to her first of three children. After working at home as a housewife for eight years, she became a visiting nurse on the Lower East Side of New York. She became involved in the International Workers of the World, a union which reached out to immigrants, women, people of color, and migrants workers in an effort to create “one big union” that would transform society and eliminate capitalism. Her participation with the IWW (along with her new acquaintance with Emma Goldman, an anarchist who believed in sexual liberation) politicized her and led her to realize that issues relating to women’s health could have political significance.
She began to write about venereal disease and other sexual health matters, and in fact, produced a pamphlet with instructions about contraception. This pamphlet led to a warrant for her arrest, and she fled to Europe to avoid imprisonment. Starting with a radical movement, and moving to include doctors, Margaret Sanger established the American Birth Control League, which was later to become Planned Parenthood. Because contraception was illegal before the 1920’s, and remained illegal in some states until the 1960’s, Margaret was only able to keep her clinics open before the 1920 by smuggling diaphragms from Europe.
After World War II, due to a newfound concern about population growth, Margaret Sanger was able to advocate successfully for research into hormonal contraception, which ultimately led to the invention of the birth control pill.