CONTEMPORARY NURSING

Contemporary Nursing

Contemporary Nursing

Introduction

The evidence base of nursing science helps in bringing about a profound effect on health knowledge, practices, and procedures around the world. Indeed, Nurses must find ways to preserve humanistic care and relationship with customers. Practice of a Nurse is generally termed as Registered Nurse and this profession is protected and regulated by law of a country. Currently, a shortage of nurses is found in many parts of the world, due to stressful work environments and an increasing number of patients in hospitals.

Discussion

History of Nurses

Nursing is the ultimate academic discipline and practice profession, which has shaped leadership displayed by women throughout the pace of time. Nursing was historically viewed as an extension of a woman's role in the home. Organized nursing had its roots in religious orders of women and men, such as the Knights Templar, dating back centuries before the era of Florence Nightingale, considered the mother of professional nursing. Nightingale was a leader not only in nursing, but in her country (Pearson, Baker, Walsh & Fitzgerald 2001, Pp. 147-152). She set the stage for leadership for the thousands of women across the world that would come behind her to lead nursing into the next two centuries.

Nursing is as old as medicine itself, which began at the dawn of history as a social service originated from the natural instinct to protect the family and care. Although, the noble goals of nursing continued throughout history, but that the practice of nursing has changed, which has been affected by factors of different societies and medical advances that made nursing as a profession. Nursing practice is based on scientific evidence, which indispensable to any society as medicine practice cannot take place without it.

Shortages of Nurses

Shortages from the 1970s into the early 1990s resulted in waiting lists of students seeking admission to nursing programs, but in the mid-1990s nursing programs began to experience massive enrolment declines. Schools of nursing watched as enrolments plummeted from the mid-1990s into 2001. This drop in enrolment was attributed to many factors, including (a) the availability of other professions, including medicine, to women; (b) the turmoil in the health care system that was reported in the media, including the lay-offs of nurses and the failure of new nurse graduates to find jobs; and (c) the perception of nursing as a low-paying career. Then suddenly another nursing shortage began at the dawn of the new century. The mass media began to carry stories of the new and unprecedented demand for nurses (Takase, Kershaw & Burt 2002, pp 196-205). The professional and lay literature began to speak about the new demand for nurses resulting from a growing population of elderly persons, a growing incidence of chronic illnesses, new roles for nurses, and the emergence of new health care services and new employers who needed nurses, requiring more nurses than schools could produce. The tight grip of managed care had been loosened, the explosion of technology and scientific knowledge were creating new treatments and cures, new venues for ...