Historical Development of Nursing Timeline Term Paper

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Nursing

The Beginning: Nightingale

Although nursing care has been around since the first cave man got a cut, the formal, organized discipline of nursing can be traced to the work of Florence Nightingale. Around the time Nightingale began her research and studies in earnest, a number of medical breakthroughs were being made that impacted the history of nursing. One was the advancement of anesthetics, which greatly enhanced the ability of nurses and doctors to care for their patients and perform surgeries. Anesthesia became especially critical on the battlefield.

US Civil War to WWII

Wartime became a primary arena for nurses to carry out their practice, as the numbers of wounded required attention. Florence Nightingale was a nurse during the Crimean War. Like Nightingale, Dorethea Lynde Dix was one of the profession's first nurse leaders and managers. Dix led teams of nurses during the Civil War in the United States. Along with Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Susie Taylor, Mary Livermore, and Mary Ann Bickerdyke, Dix was one of 20,000 nurses staffing the battlefields during the Civil War (Penn Nursing Science, 2012).

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As the profession became more formalized, with specifically defined tasks, roles, and duties of nurses, many universities in the late 19th century started to offer nursing programs. The same type of revolution was happening throughout healthcare. The American Medical Association was founded in 1847, and by 1869, it was advocating openly for the formalized training of nurses. Formal regulations for the profession began, starting with New Zealand at the turn of the century and followed a few decades later by Great Britain. Likewise, 1900 was the first year of publication of the American Journal of Nursing. Formal education of nurses took another major leap forward when, in 1923, the first independent school of nursing operated as part of Yale University. Thereafter, nurses had more control over the direction of their profession.

Nurses also became professionally empowered as their status….....

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https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/historical-development-nursing-timeline-106898