To answer the question, what is the evolution of nursing? It would be best if you considered the evolution of the nursing profession, whereby we see nurses may now be found working in a variety of settings, including hospitals, schools, and outpatient clinics. Nursing is one of the oldest professions, and throughout its history, it has been subject to and a source of a wide variety of changes. The most notable ones improved not just the profession but also the results for patients and the general status of health care. Please continue reading to learn how nursing has evolved throughout the years since we describe the evolution of nursing practice in the information below.
The evolution of nursing practice
The middle of the 19th century saw the beginning of the evolution of the nursing profession. Historians often regarded Florence Nightingale, a well-educated lady from the United Kingdom, as the person who first established the modern nursing profession. By deciding to become a nurse, Nightingale defied the expectations of society and her wealthy parents and set the ball rolling for the evolution of nursing education.
At the time, there was widespread opposition to women providing medical care to unrelated patients. On the other hand, Nightingale believed that the nursing profession presented an outstanding opportunity for women. She believed they might enhance patient care and obtain personal freedom by using their education and scientific expertise.
During the Crimean War, which took place in 1854, the British government solicited Nightingale’s assistance at a military hospital in Turkey. The number of British service members dying on the battlefield dropped substantially within a few weeks after her small team’s arrival. The public was pleased by Nightingale’s successes, which eventually contributed to the Western world’s realization of the dignity and worth of trained nursing professionals.
A decade later, during the American Civil War, there was a significant acceleration in the development of the nursing profession. As soon as hostilities broke out between the North and the south, women, most of whom were the soldiers’ wives or mistresses, started to accompany the forces. They mainly focused on providing care for wounded soldiers. The most prevalent diseases people suffered from were pneumonia, typhoid fever, diarrhea/dysentery, and malaria.
Mary Ann Bickerdyke was a prominent nurse who volunteered her services. She traveled with Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s army even though she was not married to a military member. After the battle on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee in 1863, Bickerdyke was responsible for maintaining 2,000 soldiers by herself.
Historical evolution of research in nursing
During the American Civil War, many soldiers died due to their illnesses. The North and the south set up makeshift hospitals to provide medical treatment for thousands of impacted people. There, women who fought for the south and held positions of authority, such as Captain Sally Tompkins and Phoebe Levy Pember, managed small teams of nurses who provided medical care. This, again, led to the historical evolution of research in nursing.
The volunteer nurses, often enslaved women, were instrumental in the collective effort to save many lives. As a direct consequence, the respect Americans have for nurses has significantly increased. The nursing profession would see rapid growth thanks to newly discovered support from the general public and undeniable contributions to health care.
In What Ways Has Nursing Evolved Over the Past Decades?
1. Training
Formalized education is one significant development that has occurred throughout the history of the nursing profession. Late in the 19th century, hospitals were the sites of the first training programs ever established. Student nurses were able to get valuable clinical experience in return for giving patients with treatment. During this training time, nurses assisted hospitals in making significant advancements in terms of safety and quality and humanizing medical treatment. At this time, the world witnessed the evolution of evidence-based practice in nursing.
In the latter part of the 20th century, patient requirements got more complicated, necessitating the presence of highly trained nurses in hospitals. As a result, the education paradigm centered on hospitals became less popular in favor of training programs offered by colleges and universities.
By the year 1960, the evolution of the nursing process was massively enhanced as colleges and universities offered over 170 nursing programs throughout the nation. In 1950, Texas Woman’s University became the first institution in the state to provide a nursing degree that was nationally certified, making it one of the state’s oldest educational institutions. There are now 871 nursing education programs available to students in the United States at the combined undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate levels.
The education of nurses continues to advance in tandem with changes in the requirements of their patients, and there has never been a greater focus placed on receiving an all-encompassing education. The official advice was provided by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in the year 2010. By 2020, at least 80 percent of registered nurses will possess a bachelor’s degree to handle their patients’ increasingly complex situations effectively. In addition, the IOM recommended increasing the number of nurses with doctoral degrees.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) is also responsible for establishing this requirement, which states that all registered nurses should possess a bachelor’s degree or education equal to a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Colleges and universities have heard these requests and have responded by boosting the number of students who may enroll in four-year nursing programs. Since 2010, the number of students enrolled in programs leading to a bachelor’s degree for registered nurses has increased by 80 percent.
Additionally, there is a stronger focus placed on intellectual advancement. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) encourages registered nurses to further their education beyond the entry-level degree and enroll in graduate or postgraduate programs. Nurses may meet the need for advanced practice registered nurses throughout the country if they behave in this manner.
2. Responsibilities
The fact that nurses today have a wider variety of responsibilities is another significant development in the history of the nursing profession. Nursing is no longer restricted to the role of just providing care. The International Council of Nurses describes the practice of contemporary nursing as requiring a combination of knowledge, judgment, and ability.
The present method of education and training has resulted in an expansion of nurses’ duties. Over three million registered nurses now work in the United States, and each is competent to offer care to patients, act as advocates for patients, manage health care teams, and conduct research to enhance treatment.
For instance, nurse practitioners can provide many of the same services as doctors. After the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, this advanced practice in registered nursing first came into existence. The Act ensured that persons with low incomes and those over 65 could access medical care services.
Suddenly, more people in the United States sought medical attention. Some nurses collaborated with physicians to get extra training to meet the demand for their services. The upshot of this was expanding the nursing profession, which allowed nurse practitioners to collaborate with medical professionals to diagnose and treat common ailments.
3. Specialization
As a result of advances in medical technology and the ever-changing requirements of individual patients, registered nurses can now specialize in a wide variety of fields. Several choices are available, including dermatology, emergency care, and rehabilitation. However, advanced practice registered nursing encompasses some of the most sought-after subspecialties in nursing today.
The highest level of practice to work as nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives, or clinical nurse specialists, registered nurses are required to have a master’s degree or higher. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates a 26 percent rise in the number of jobs available for nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, and nurse midwives by 2028. That is almost six times higher than the average for all jobs.
Because there is a shortage of primary care services in the United States, the job prognosis for nurse practitioners is very positive. A combination of physician scarcity and an increase in older people in the community has led to an absence of primary care providers. The American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) believes that nurse practitioners are in the most significant position to fill this need. The scope of practice for nurse practitioners includes the provision of primary care services both alone and in conjunction with other medical community members.
Nurse practitioners can specialize in a wide variety of fields. The role of the family nurse practitioner (FNP), who treats patients of all ages, is the most all-encompassing one in the nursing profession. They concentrate on health promotion, the prevention of disease, and the treatment of conditions that are considered to be treatable by primary care. At the national level, over 67 percent of nurse practitioners have the certification to practice as family nurse practitioners.
4. Quality and Safety
The function of nurses in the treatment of patients has always been an important one. However, that function is considerably more apparent now than it was before. The Department of Health and Family Services of the United States reports that nurses spend much more time with patients than physicians. In addition, they communicate consistently with every member of the patient’s health care team. In addition to their vital clinical job, these elements provide nurses the ability to guarantee that the treatment provided by health care teams is of high quality.
An extensive amount of data suggests a correlation between high-quality nursing care and favorable patient outcomes, particularly for nurse practitioners. The American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) asserts that research demonstrates that nurse practitioners provide treatment that is not only effective but also safe and focused on the patient. In addition, compared to physicians, patients of nurse practitioners report greater satisfaction levels, have fewer needless hospital readmissions, and spend less time in the hospital for reasons that might have been avoided.
The American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) has concluded that these findings are good news for the health care system in the United States, which ranks lower than the health care systems in other developed countries in terms of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. A growing number of groups have begun to acknowledge the significance of nurse practitioners and are urging politicians to provide them the authority to practice as thoroughly and independently as their education and experience prepare them to.
Where Will Nursing Go from Here?
The one thing that has remained the same throughout the development of the nursing profession is change. Because they have received extensive training, nurses are now ready to accept more responsibilities in a wider variety of sectors of health care. Nurses continue to offer high-quality care even as the scope of their responsibilities grows.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) believes that today’s nurses can bring about significant changes in the medical system in the United States. One of the requirements is a dedication to continuing education throughout one’s life.
Nurses’ academic advancement and professional involvement will be significant to the future of the nursing profession. If you are a registered nurse with a bachelor’s degree in nursing, you should consider advancing your education by pursuing a master’s degree. Education beyond the undergraduate level may assist you in becoming skilled in areas that the IOM considers essential, such as leadership, research, and collaboration.
Evolution of community health nursing
Students at times may be asked to write an evolution of a nursing essay. For this reason, you need to understand that there many areas in community health that you can base, such as essays. For this reason, below, we look at the evolution of community health nursing and several other aspects that can give you ideas in understanding more about the evolution of nursing and its components.
The practice of community health nursing has shifted its emphasis to include care for people’s families and the communities in which they live. The emphasis and perspective are distinct from those of other nurses working in their respective fields. Community health nursing is a distinct and specialized orientation to the treatment that includes the principles of public health as guiding ideas. These principles serve as the foundation for community health nursing.
Understanding the evolution of community health will necessitate understanding the evolution of nursing theory. The late 1800s were when nursing education was given a lot of attention, which led to the development of the first nursing theories. In her book “Environmental Theory,” published in 1860, Florence Nightingale described nursing as “the Act of exploiting the patient’s surroundings to support him in his recovery. Nursing theories have been critical in the evolution of community health nursing, considering they have played a significant role in the development of the following component of nursing;
The evolution of psychiatric nursing
There has been an expansion of psychiatric nursing duties inside the forensic system, and nurses are now working both within the healthcare system of correctional facilities and with individuals who suffer from severe and sometimes hazardous personality disorders, which all have their basis in nursing theories. There has been a significant paradigm change in the education and training of those nurses, and future nurses will probably have degrees.
Evolution of doctoral nursing
The earliest Ph.D. programs that actively sought applicants from the nursing profession were established at New York University and Columbia University. These were developed in education departments in the 1920s and 1930s and were explicitly geared toward preparing nursing instructors. Earning these degrees and becoming an eligible health practitioner in the community necessitated learning critical nursing theories that, until today, are a foundation for nursing practice.
The evolution of nursing informatics
Over the last 20 years, nursing informatics has arisen as a field to aid nurses in making full use of information technology to enhance the quality of care they provide. NI is a subspecialty of nursing that utilizes both nursing science and computer science to effectively manage and transmit information, knowledge, and data in nursing practice.
Conclusion
The history of nursing management has been “lost” in accounts of nursing as a whole that are overly celebratory and lack a critical perspective. It has come to light that Nightingale was not the only significant figure in the history of nursing management. That nursing administration’s history is longer and more complicated than is commonly believed. Again, studying the evolution of nursing enables nurses to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the issues currently affecting the nursing profession, such as pay, regulation, shortage, education, defining practice, autonomy, and unity. Without a solid grounding in history, contemporary nurses cannot effectively address the current important issues.
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