History of Nursing Profession
History of nursing profession Prior to the foundation of modern nursing, nuns and the military often provided nursing-like services. Florence Nightingale is the founder of modern nurses. she formed the base for the first professional nursing philosophy. She saw the role of nursing as 'having charge of somebody’s health' (Crisp&Taylor,2009) based on the knowledge of how to put the body in such a state to be free of disease or to recover from disease' (Crisp&Taylor,2009). The religious and military roots of modern nursing remain in evidence today in many countries, for example in the United Kingdom, senior female nurses are known as sisters. It was during time of war that a significant development in nursing history arose when English nurse Florence Nightingale, working to improve conditions of soldiers in the Crimean War, laid the foundation stone of professional nursing with the principles summarised in the book ‘Notes on Nursing’. Other important nurses in the development of the profession include: Mary Seacole, who also worked as a nurse in the Crimea; Agnes Elizabeth Jones and Linda Richards, who established quality nursing schools in the USA and Japan, and Linda Richards who was officially America's first professionally trained nurse, graduating in 1873 from the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. New Zealand was the first country to regulate nurses nationally, with adoption of the Nurses Registration Act on the 12 September 1901. It was here in New Zealand that Ellen Dougherty became the first registered nurse. North Carolina was the first state in the United States to pass a nursing license law in 1903. In the 1990s nurses became able to prescribe medications, order diagnostic and pathology tests and refer patients to other health professionals as needed. Nurses in the United States Army actually started during the Revolutionary War when a general suggested to George Washington that he needed female nurses "to attend the sick