Gaining insight into the history of nursing provides a foundation for the nursing standards and patient care practices today. We continue to contrast and highlight the work that was started with Florence Nightingale, in nursing care today.
We treat basic human needs in the order of the “Maslow Hierarchy”. The Jean Watson theory of human caring continues to shape the expectation of care. Surly nursing has evolved to the current times and continues to grow to meet the ever-pressing needs of the growing population, technology demands, and real-world events and situations. This led to greater expansions of nursing of nursing in the hospitals, military and communities. The nursing profession continues to be one of the fasting growing and evolving professions in the world, with increased demand for skills, knowledge, opportunity and growth.
Our responsibilities, skills, and knowledge are becoming more and more demanding to adapt to our version of modern medicine and our practice must evolve along with it (Friberg 73). The first trend is education and standards of learning, to include the BSN as the standard entry level for registered nurses. Education has evolved to meet the stands of the ANA and Boards of Nursing in the attempt to have new graduate nurses ready to function above the novice level after successful complication of the NCLEX RN examination. There are more specialty care areas for nurses today than ever before. Education now allows a nurse to function in provider roles. Fortunately, nursing is held to a high standard of education with strict requirements and regulations in place.
Initially, formal models of nursing were considered as ways of representing what nursing is, what it aimed to achieve and the different components of nursing that could then be taken apart, analysed and understood. The components of nursing – however it may be defined – are complex and, as a result, several models were developed. Each offered a different way of thinking about nursing and each presented a different way of guiding nursing practice. So, a nursing model could be defined as “a picture or representation of what nursing actually is” (Pearson et al, 1996). The second trend is nursing theories and models of care.
Initially, formal models of nursing were considered as ways of representing what nursing is, what it aimed to achieve and the different components of nursing that could then be taken apart, analysed and understood. Each model offers a different way of approach to care and are presented and different ways. So, a nursing model could be defined as “a picture or representation of what nursing actually is” (Pearson et al, 1996). The third is Evidenced Based Practice.
This is the why we do, what we do. There has been evidence that supports was outcome of the intervention. I often refer to this as the “When we know better, we do better: standard. This provides us the opportunity to exam the outcomes of treatment and become more effective in that treatment. These are the trends that I use as my moral compass to navigate through the care decisions and make and care I provide daily. References Pearson, J.
(1996). Beginning the journey to self reflective practice: A study of teaching and learning in the first year of the Diploma in Nursing programme at Whitireia Community Polytechnic 1993. Porirua N.Z.: Whitireia Community Polytechnic. Friberg, E. E., & Creasia, J.
L. (2016). Conceptual foundations: The bridge to professional nursing practice (6th ed).
