nursing

nursing
nursing [nʉr′siŋ]
n.
1. the duties or profession of a nurse
2. the medical care given by a nurse

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nurs·ing (nûrʹsĭng) n.
1. The profession of a nurse.
2. The tasks or care of a nurse.

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Health-care profession providing physical and emotional care to the sick and disabled and promoting health in all individuals through activities including research, health education, and patient consultation.

Nursing gained recognition in the 19th century with the activities of Florence Nightingale. Many nurses have specialties (e.g., psychiatry, critical care). Nurse-practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, nurse-anesthetists, and nurse-midwives undertake tasks traditionally performed by physicians. Nursing degrees go as high as the doctorate, and staff positions include administration. In addition to health-care settings, nurses practice in schools, the military, industry, and private homes. Community (public health) nurses educate the public on topics such as nutrition and disease prevention.

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▪ medical profession
Introduction
 profession that assumes responsibility for the continuous care of the sick, the injured, the disabled, and the dying. Nursing is also responsible for encouraging the health of individuals, families, and communities in medical and community settings. Nurses are actively involved in health care research, management, policy deliberations, and patient advocacy. Nurses with postbaccalaureate preparation assume independent responsibility for providing primary health care and specialty services to individuals, families, and communities.

      Professional nurses work both independently and in collaboration with other health care professionals such as physicians. Professional nurses supervise the work of nurses who have limited licenses, such as licensed practical nurses (LPNs) in the United States and enrolled nurses (ENs) in Australia. Professional nurses also oversee the work of nursing assistants in various settings.

      Nursing is the largest, the most diverse, and one of the most respected of all the health care professions. There are more than 2.9 million registered nurses in the United States alone, and many more millions worldwide. While true demographic representation remains an elusive goal, nursing does have a higher proportional representation of racial and ethnic minorities than other health care professions. In some countries, however, men still remain significantly underrepresented.

      The demand for nursing remains high, and projections suggest that such demand will substantively increase. Advances in health care technology, rising expectations of people seeking care, and reorganization of health care systems require a greater number of highly educated professionals. Demographic changes, such as large aging populations in many countries of the world, also fuel this demand.

History of nursing
 Although the origins of nursing predate the mid-19th century, the history of professional nursing traditionally begins with Florence Nightingale (Nightingale, Florence). Nightingale, the well-educated daughter of wealthy British parents, defied social conventions and decided to become a nurse. The nursing of strangers, either in hospitals or in their homes, was not then seen as a respectable career for well-bred ladies, who, if they wished to nurse, were expected to do so only for sick family and intimate friends. In a radical departure from these views, Nightingale believed that well-educated women, using scientific principles and informed education about healthy lifestyles, could dramatically improve the care of sick patients. Moreover, she believed that nursing provided an ideal independent calling full of intellectual and social freedom for women, who at that time had few other career options.

      In 1854 Nightingale had the opportunity to test her beliefs during Britain's Crimean War. Newspaper stories reporting that sick and wounded Russian soldiers nursed by religious orders fared much better than British soldiers inflamed public opinion. In response, the British government asked Nightingale to take a small group of nurses to the military hospital at Scutari (modern-day Üsküdar, Turk.). Within days of their arrival, Nightingale and her nurses had reorganized the barracks hospital in accordance with 19th-century science: walls were scrubbed for sanitation, windows opened for ventilation, nourishing food prepared and served, and medications and treatments efficiently administered. Within weeks death rates plummeted, and soldiers were no longer sickened by infectious diseases arising from poor sanitary conditions. Within months a grateful public knew of the work of the “Lady with the Lamp,” who made nightly rounds comforting the sick and wounded. By the end of the 19th century, the entire Western world shared Nightingale's belief in the worth of educated nurses.

 Nightingale's achievements overshadowed other ways to nurse the sick. For centuries, most nursing of the sick had taken place at home and had been the responsibility of families, friends, and respected community members with reputations as effective healers. During epidemics, such as cholera, typhus, and smallpox, men took on active nursing roles. For example, Stephen Girard (Girard, Stephen), a wealthy French-born banker, won the hearts of citizens of his adopted city of Philadelphia for his courageous and compassionate nursing of the victims of the 1793 yellow fever epidemic.

      As urbanization and industrialization spread, those without families to care for them found themselves in hospitals (hospital) where the quality of nursing care varied enormously. Some patients received excellent care. Women from religious nursing orders were particularly known for the quality of the nursing care they provided in the hospitals they established. Other hospitals depended on recovering patients or hired men and women for the nursing care of patients. Sometimes this care was excellent; other times it was deplorable, and the unreliability of hospital-based nursing care became a particular problem by the late 19th century, when changes in medical practices and treatments required competent nurses. The convergence of hospitals' needs, physicians' wishes, and women's desire for meaningful work led to a new health care professional: the trained nurse.

      Hospitals established their own training schools for nurses. In exchange for lectures and clinical instructions, students provided the hospital with two or three years of skilled free nursing care. This hospital-based educational (education) model had significant long-term implications. It bound the education of nurses to hospitals rather than colleges, a tie that was not definitively broken until the latter half of the 20th century. The hospital-based training model also reinforced segregation in society and in the health care system. For instance, African American student nurses were barred from almost all American hospitals and training schools. They could seek training only in schools established by African American hospitals. Most of all, the hospital-based training model strengthened the cultural stereotyping of nursing as women's work. Only a few hospitals provided training to maintain men's traditional roles within nursing.

      Still, nurses transformed hospitals. In addition to the skilled, compassionate care they gave to patients, they established an orderly, routine, and systemized environment within which patients healed. They administered increasingly complicated treatments and medication regimes. They maintained the aseptic and infection-control protocols that allowed more complex and invasive surgeries to proceed. In addition, they experimented with different models of nursing interventions that humanized increasingly technical and impersonal medical procedures.

 Outside hospitals, trained nurses quickly became critical in the fight against infectious diseases (infectious disease). In the early 20th century, the newly discovered “ germ theory” of disease (the knowledge that many illnesses were caused by bacteria) caused considerable alarm in countries around the world. Teaching methods of preventing the spread of diseases, such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, and influenza, became the domain of the visiting nurses in the United States and the district nurses in the United Kingdom and Europe. These nurses cared for infected patients in the patients' homes and taught families and communities the measures necessary to prevent spreading the infection. They were particularly committed to working with poor and immigrant communities, which often had little access to other health care services. The work of these nurses contributed to a dramatic decline in the mortality and morbidity rates from infectious diseases for children and adults.

      At the same time, independent contractors called private-duty nurses cared for sick individuals in their homes. These nurses performed important clinical work and supported families who had the financial resources to afford care, but the unregulated health care labour market left them vulnerable to competition from both untrained nurses and each year's class of newly graduated trained nurses. Very soon, the supply of private-duty nurses was greater than the demand from families. At the turn of the 20th century, nurses in industrialized countries began to establish professional associations to set standards that differentiated the work of trained nurses from both assistive-nursing personnel and untrained nurses. More important, they successfully sought licensing protection for the practice of registered nursing. Later on, nurses in some countries turned to collective bargaining and labour organizations to assist them in asserting their and their patients' rights to improve conditions and make quality nursing care possible.

      By the mid-1930s the increasing technological and clinical demands of patient care, the escalating needs of patients for intensive nursing, and the resulting movement of such care out of homes and into hospitals demanded hospital staffs of trained rather than student nurses. By the mid-1950s hospitals were the largest single employer of registered nurses. This trend continues, although as changes in health care systems have reemphasized care at home, a proportionately greater number of nurses work in outpatient clinics, home care, public health, and other community-based health care organizations.

 Other important changes in nursing occurred during the latter half of the 20th century. The profession grew more diverse. For example, in the United States, the National Organization of Coloured Graduate Nurses (NOCGN) capitalized on the acute shortage of nurses during World War II and successfully pushed for the desegregation of both the military nursing corps and the nursing associations. The American Nurses Association (ANA) desegregated in 1949, one of the first national professional associations to do so. As a result, in 1951, feeling its goals fulfilled, the NOCGN dissolved. But by the late 1960s some African American nurses felt that the ANA had neither the time nor the resources to adequately address all their concerns. The National Black Nurses Association (NBNA) formed in 1971 as a parallel organization to the ANA.

      Nursing's educational structure also changed. Dependence on hospital-based training schools declined, and those schools were replaced with collegiate programs either in community or technical colleges or in universities. In addition, more systematic and widespread programs of graduate education began to emerge. These programs prepare nurses not only for roles in management and education but also for roles as clinical specialists and nurse practitioners. Nurses no longer had to seek doctoral degrees in fields other than nursing. By the 1970s nurses were establishing their own doctoral programs, emphasizing the nursing knowledge and science and research needed to address pressing nursing care and care-delivery issues.

      During the second half of the 20th century, nurses responded to rising numbers of sick patients with innovative reorganizations of their patterns of care. For example, critical care units in hospitals began when nurses started grouping their most critically ill patients together to provide more effective use of modern technology. In addition, experiments with models of progressive patient care and primary nursing reemphasized the responsibility of one nurse for one patient in spite of the often-overwhelming bureaucratic demands by hospitals on nurses' time.

      The nursing profession also has been strengthened by its increasing emphasis on national and international work in developing countries and by its advocacy of healthy and safe environments. The international scope of nursing is supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), which recognizes nursing as the backbone of most health care systems around the world.

The practice of nursing

Scope of nursing practice
      According to the International Council of Nurses (ICN), the scope of nursing practice “encompasses autonomous and collaborative care of individuals of all ages, families, groups, and communities, sick or well and in all settings.” National nursing associations further clarify the scope of nursing practice by establishing particular practice standards and codes of ethics. National and state agencies also regulate the scope of nursing practice. Together, these bodies set forth legal parameters and guidelines for the practice of nurses as clinicians, educators, administrators, or researchers.

education for nursing practice
      Nurses enter practice as generalists. They care for individuals and families of all ages in homes, hospitals, schools, long-term-care facilities, outpatient clinics, and medical offices. Many countries require three to four years of education at the university level for generalist practice, although variations exist. For example, in the United States, nurses can enter generalist practice through a two-year program in a community college or a four-year program in a college or university.

      Preparation for specialization in nursing or advanced nursing practice usually occurs at the master's level. A college or university degree in nursing is required for entrance to most master's programs. These programs emphasize the assessment and management of illnesses, pharmacology, health education, and supervised practice in specialty fields, such as pediatrics, mental health, women's health, community health, or geriatrics (gerontology and geriatrics).

      Research preparation in nursing takes place at the doctoral level. Coursework emphasizes nursing knowledge and science and research methods. An original and substantive research study is required for completion of the doctoral degree.

Forms of general nursing practice
hospital-based nursing practice
 Hospital nursing is perhaps the most familiar of all forms of nursing practice. Within hospitals, however, there are many different types of practices. Some nurses care for patients with illnesses such as diabetes (diabetes mellitus) or heart failure, whereas others care for patients before, during, and after surgery or in pediatric, psychiatric, or childbirth units. Nurses work in technologically sophisticated critical care units, such as intensive care or cardiac care units. They work in emergency departments, operating rooms, and recovery rooms, as well as in outpatient clinics. The skilled care and comfort nurses provide patients and families are only a part of their work. They are also responsible for teaching individuals and families ways to manage illnesses or injuries during recovery at home. When necessary, they teach patients ways to cope with chronic conditions. Most hospital-based nurses are generalists. Those with advanced nursing degrees provide clinical oversight and consultation, work in management, and conduct patient-care research.

Community health (public health) nursing practice
 Community health nursing incorporates varying titles to describe the work of nurses in community settings. Over the past centuries and in different parts of the world, community health nurses were called district nurses, visiting nurses, public health nurses, home-care nurses, and community health nurses. Today community health nursing and public health nursing are the most common titles used by nurses whose practices focus on promoting and protecting the health of populations. Knowledge from nursing, social, and public health sciences informs community health nursing practices. In many countries, ensuring that needed health services are provided to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups is central to community health nursing practice. In the United States, community health nurses work in a variety of settings, including state and local health departments, school health programs, migrant health clinics, neighbourhood health centres, senior centres, occupational health programs, nursing centres, and home care programs. Care at home is often seen as a preferred alternative for caring for the sick. Today home-care nurses provide very sophisticated, complex care in patients' homes. Globally, home care is being examined as a solution to the needs of the growing numbers of elderly requiring care.

Mental health (psychiatry) nursing practice
      Mental health (or psychiatric) nursing practice concentrates on the care of those with emotional or stress-related concerns. Nurses practice in inpatient units of hospitals or in outpatient mental health clinics, and they work with individuals, groups, and families. Advanced-practice mental health nurses also provide psychotherapy to individuals, groups, and families in private practice, consult with community organizations to provide mental health support, and work with other nurses in both inpatient and outpatient settings to meet the emotional needs of patients and families struggling with physical illnesses or injuries.

The care of children
 The care of children, often referred to as pediatric (pediatrics) nursing, focuses on the care of infants, children, and adolescents. The care of families, the most important support in childrens' lives, is also a critically important component of the care of children. Pediatric nurses work to ensure that the normal developmental needs of children and families are met even as they work to treat the symptoms of serious illnesses or injuries. These nurses also work to promote the health of children through immunization programs, child abuse interventions, nutritional and physical activity education, and health-screening initiatives. Both generalist and specialist pediatric nurses work in hospitals, outpatient clinics, schools, day-care centres, and almost anywhere else children are to be found.

The care of women
      The care of women, especially of childbearing and childrearing women (often called maternal-child nursing), has long been a particular nursing concern. As early as the 1920s, nurses worked with national and local governments, private charities, and other concerned professionals to ensure that mothers and children received proper nutrition, social support, and medical care. Later, nurses began working with national and international agencies to guarantee rights to adequate health care, respect for human rights, protection against violence, access to quality reproductive health services, and nutritional and educational support. Generalist and specialist nurses caring for women work on obstetrical and gynecological (obstetrics and gynecology) units in hospitals and in a variety of outpatient clinics, medical offices, and policy boards. Many have particular expertise in such areas as osteoporosis, breast-feeding support, domestic violence, and mental health issues of women.

Geriatric nursing practice
 Geriatric nursing is one of the fastest-growing areas of nursing practice. This growth matches demographic need. For example, projections in the United States suggest that longer life expectancies and the impact of the “baby boom” generation will result in a significant increase in the number of individuals over age 65. In 2005 individuals over 65 accounted for about 13 percent of the total population; however, they are expected to account for almost 20 percent of the total population by 2030. Moreover, those over 65 use more health care and nursing services than any other demographic group. Most schools of nursing incorporate specific content on geriatric nursing in their curricula. Increasingly, all generalist nurses are prepared to care for elderly patients in a variety of settings including hospitals, outpatient clinics, medical offices, nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities, assisted living facilities, and individuals' own homes. Specialists concentrate on more specific aspects of elder care, including maintaining function and quality of life, delivering mental health services, providing environmental support, managing medications, reducing the risks for problems such as falling, confusion, skin breakdown, and infections, and attending to the ethical issues associated with frailty and vulnerability.

Advanced nursing practice
Nurse practitioners
      Nurse practitioners are prepared at the master's level in universities to provide a broad range of diagnostic and treatment services to individuals and families. This form of advanced nursing practice began in the United States in the 1960s, following the passage of health care legislation ( Medicare and Medicaid) that guaranteed citizens over age 65 and low-income citizens access to health care services. In response, some nurses, working in collaboration with physicians, obtained additional training and expanded their practice by assuming responsibility for the diagnosis and treatment of common acute and stable chronic illnesses of children and adults. Initially, nurse practitioners worked in primary care settings; there they treated essentially healthy children who experienced routine colds (common cold), infections, or developmental issues, performed physical exams on adults, and worked with both individuals and families to ensure symptom stability in such illnesses as diabetes, heart disease (coronary heart disease), and emphysema. Today nurse practitioners are an important component of primary health care services, and their practice has expanded into specialty areas as well. Specialized nurse practitioners often work in collaboration with physicians in emergency rooms, intensive care units of hospitals, nursing homes, and medical practices.

Clinical nursing specialists
      Clinical nursing specialists are prepared in universities at the master's level. Their clinically focused education is in particular specialties, such as neurology, cardiology, rehabilitation (physical medicine and rehabilitation), or psychiatry. Clinical nursing specialists may provide direct care to patients with complex nursing needs, or they may provide consultation to generalist nurses. Clinical nursing specialists also direct continuing staff education programs. They usually work in hospitals and outpatient clinics, although some clinical nursing specialists establish independent practices.

Nurse midwives (midwifery)
      Nurse midwives (midwifery) are rooted in the centuries-old tradition of childbirth at home. Midwives, rather than obstetricians, have historically been the primary provider of care to birthing women, and they remain so in many parts of the industrialized and developing world. In the United States in the 1930s, some nurses began combining their skills with those of midwives to offer birthing women alternatives to obstetrical care. The new specialty of nurse-midwifery grew slowly, serving mainly poor and geographically disadvantaged women and their families. The women's movement beginning in the 1960s brought a surge in demand for nurse-midwives from women who wanted both the naturalness of a traditional delivery and the safety of available technology if any problems developed. Numbers of nurse-midwives in the United States grew from fewer than 300 in 1963 to over 7,000 in 2007. Today most nurse-midwives are prepared in universities at the master's level. They deliver nearly 300,000 babies every year, and, in contrast to traditional midwives, who deliver in homes, nurse-midwives do so mainly in hospitals and formal birthing centres. Global demand for nurse-midwifery care is projected to grow significantly.

Nurse anesthetists (anesthetic)
      Nurse anesthetists began practicing in the late 19th century. Trained nurses, who at that time were becoming an increasingly important presence in operating rooms, assumed responsibility for both administering anesthesia and providing individualized patient monitoring for any reactions during surgical procedures. Nurse anesthetists proved their value during World War I, when they were the sole providers of anesthesia in all military hospitals. Today nurse anesthetists are established health care providers. In the United States alone they provide two-thirds of all anesthesia services and are the sole providers of anesthesia services in most rural American hospitals. Nurse anesthetists train at the postgraduate level, either in master's programs in schools of nursing or in affiliated programs in departments of health sciences. They work everywhere anesthesia is delivered: in operating rooms, obstetrical delivery suites, ambulatory surgical centres, and medical offices.

Licensing
      Given the critical importance of standardized and safe nursing care, all countries have established mechanisms for ensuring minimal qualifications for entry into practice and continuing nursing education. Those countries with centralized health systems, such as many European and South American countries, enact national systems for nurse licensing. Countries with decentralized and privatized systems such as the United States cede to states and provinces the authority to determine minimal nurse licensing requirements. In most instances licenses are time-limited and can be revoked if circumstances warrant such an action. Licensing renewal often depends on some method of certifying continued competence.

National organizations
      In virtually every country of the world, there is a national nursing organization that promotes standards of practice, advocates for safe patient care, and articulates the profession's position on pressing health care issues to policy boards, government agencies, and the general public. Many national nursing organizations also have associated journals that publicize research findings, disseminate timely clinical information, and discuss outcomes of policy initiatives. In addition, most nursing specialty and advanced practice groups have their own organizations and associated journals that reach both national and international audiences. There are a wide variety of nursing special-interest groups. Different unions also engage in collective bargaining and labour organizing on behalf of nurses.

International organizations
      The International Council of Nurses (ICN), a federation of over 128 national nurses associations based in Geneva, speaks for nursing globally. The World Health Organization (WHO) has had a long-standing interest in promoting the role of nursing, particularly as independent community-based providers of primary health care in Third World and other underserved countries. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and its national affiliates have long recognized the critical role of nursing in disaster relief and ongoing health education projects.

Patricia D'Antonio Karen Buhler-Wilkerson

Additional Reading
The historical tradition of the nursing occupation is covered in Cecil Blanche Woodham Smith, Florence Nightingale, 1820–1910 (1950, reissued 1983); Monica E. Baly, Florence Nightingale and the Nursing Legacy: Building the Foundations of Modern Nursing & Midwifery, 4th ed. (1998); M. Patricia Donahue, Nursing, the Finest Art: An Illustrated History, 2nd ed. (1996); Philip A. Kalisch and Beatrice J. Kalisch, American Nursing: A History, 4th ed. (2004); and Susan Muaddi Darraj, Mary Eliza Mahoney and the Legacy of African American Nurses (2005).Nursing practices are explored in Perle Slavik Cowen and Sue Moorhead, Current Issues in Nursing, 7th ed. (2006); Diana J. Mason, Judith K. Leavitt, and Mary W. Chaffee, Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care, 5th ed. (2006); and Afaf Ibrahim Meleis, Theoretical Nursing: Development and Progress, 4th ed. (2006).Education for the nursing profession is the subject of Committee for the Study of Nursing Education (U.S.), Nursing and Nursing Education in the United States (1923, reprinted 1984), a classic report on nursing training; and Bryn Davis (ed.), Nursing Education: Research and Developments (1987).

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Universalium. 2010.

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