Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life.
Take on vital roles of education, assessing situations, as support. Nurses may be differentiated from other health care providers by their approach to patient care, training, and scope of practice.
Specialties with differing levels of prescription authority. Nurses comprise the largest component of most healthcare environments; There is evidence of international shortages of qualified nurses
Many nurses provide care within the ordering scope of physicians, and this traditional role has shaped the public image of nurses as care providers.
Nurse practitioners are nurses with a graduate degree in advanced practice nursing. They are however permitted by most jurisdictions to practice independently in a variety of settings.
Since the postwar period, nurse education has undergone a process of diversification towards advanced & specialized credentials, many of the traditional regulations and provider roles are changing.
Nurses develop a plan of care, working collaboratively with physicians, therapists, the patient, the patient's family, & other team members that focuses on treating illness to improve quality of life
In the United Kingdom and the United States, clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners, diagnose health problems and prescribe the correct medications and other therapies,
Nurses may help coordinate the patient care performed by other members of a multidisciplinary health care team such as therapists, medical practitioners, and dietitians.
Nurses provide care both interdependently, With physicians, independently as nursing professionals. To providing care and support, nurses educate the public, and promote health and wellness
Nursing historians face the challenges of determining whether care provided to the sick or injured in antiquity is called nursing care.
In the fifth century BC, for example, the Hippocratic Collection in places describes skilled care and observation of patients by male "attendants," who may have been early nurses.
About the role of the nurse as "the different parts or members of the body as mentioned before including the skin, cannot be correctly described by one who is not well versed in anatomy.
Hence, any one desirous of acquiring a thorough knowledge of anatomy should prepare a dead body and carefully observe, by dissecting it, and examine its different parts."
Before the foundation of modern nursing, members of religious orders such as nuns and monks often provided nursing-like care.
In Christian, Islamic and Buddhist traditions amongst others. Phoebe, mentioned in Romans 16 has been described in many sources as "the first visiting nurse".
These traditions were influential in the development of the ethos of modern nursing. The religious roots of modern nursing remain in evidence today in many countries.
One example in the United Kingdom is the use of the historical title "sister" to refer to a senior nurse in the past.
During the Reformation of the 16th century, Protestant reformers shut down the monasteries and convents, allowing a few hundred municipal hospices to remain in operation in northern Europe.
Those nuns who had been serving as nurses were given pensions or told to get married & stay home. Nursing care went to the inexperienced as traditional caretakers, rooted in the R.C. Church,
During the Crimean War the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna issued the call for women to join the Order of Exaltation of the Cross (Krestoviy Zhenskaya obshchina) for the year of service
The first section of twenty-eight "sisters", headed by Aleksandra Petrovna Stakhovich, the Directress of the Order, went off to the Crimea early in November 1854.
Florence Nightingale laid the foundations of professional nursing after the Crimean War. Nightingale believed that nursing was a social freedom and mission for women.
She believed that any educated woman can help improve the care of the medically sick. Her Notes on Nursing (1859) became popular.
Nightingale model of professional education, nursing School that is connected to a continuously operating hospital & medical school, spread widely in Europe & N. America after 1870
Nightingale was also a pioneer of the graphical presentation of statistical data. Florence Nightingale worked on sub concepts of environmental theory.
She included five factors that helped nurses in her time of working in poor sanitation and with uneducated nurses. These factors included
(1) Fresh air, (2) Clean water, (3) A working drainage system, (4) Cleanliness, and (5) Good light or sunlight.
Nightingale believed that a clean, working environment was important in caring for patients. In the 19th century, this theory was ideal for helping patients,
To guide environment around the patient for the better of their health. Seacole practiced hygiene & the use of herbs in healing wounded soldiers and those suffering from diseases in the 19th century