Amy Allin
Capella University
Abstract
Each educator brings to the academic arena their own personal nursing philosophy that is based on experience and is historic in nature. By studying the history of nursing, the educator is able to guide the student through their education process. As an educator the nurse becomes an extension of one’s own personal philosophy. Nursing theory serves as the foundation on which to develop a personal philosophy and characterizes nursing as a profession based on the art of caring and science. In 1907, Adelaide Nutting and Lavinia Dock wrote in the preface to their book on the history of nursing:
"the modern nurse, keenly interested as she is in the present and future of her profession, knows little of its past. She loses both the inspiration which arises from cherished tradition, and the perspective which shows the relation of one progressive movement to others. Only in the light of history can she see how closely her own calling is linked with the general conditions of education and liberty that obtain - as they rise, she rises, and as they sink, she falls." (Michaels, D. 2012).
The History and Philosophy of Nurse Education
Key Points of Nursing Education From the 1860s nurse training was undertaken in hospitals, which was mainly attributed to the influence of Florence Nightingale with the most well-known and influential training school being the Florence Nightingale School, set up at St Thomas’s Hospital, London in 1860 (Ousey, 2011). Nightingale viewed nursing as a search for truth in finding answers to health care questions or discovering and using god’s laws of healing in nursing practice (Potter, 2005). Miss Nightingale's pattern was adopted by these early schools but they failed to meet their intended purposes. The nursing care of the ill was inhumane and inadequate. When physicians found that trained nurses made a difference in the survival and
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