Linda Richards's Role In The Growth Of Nursing As A Career

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Malinda Ann Judson Richards, also known as Linda Richards was a strong innovated nurse who helped in the growth of nursing as a profession. During the 1800s nurses did not experience training as in-depth as it is today, at the time it was considered informal nursing. Even with the limited education Linda was able to take away from her experiences and make it better for future nurses to come. Due to her past experiences and the little resources they had at the time she was still able to make a difference in the nursing profession this is why I chose her as my nursing leader.
Linda Richard was an exceptional nurse even though her reasons of wanting to join the profession were not caused on the best of circumstances. She was born in 1841 and …show more content…

Nurses had to work sixteen hour shifts, but even if they were off the patients were still their responsibility, it was a twenty-four hour job. The nurses would receive little to no education about medication or symptoms and how to make those specific connections to help with the underlying problem the patient is having. Even though they did not understand these aspects they still had to take care of the patient. Another problem the hospitals had was the fact that physician orders and nurses’ reports were not properly recorded, they were completely verbal which caused a great deal of miscommunications and confusion (Hanink, n.d.). After graduating Linda began working at New York’s Bellevue Hospital Training School, where is took it upon herself to change how nurses’ reports were being taken and started writing it down. Certain physicians adored and supported the idea of writing down the nurses’ report and pushed it to be a standard practice within health care, which was later adopted across the U.S and England (Hanink, n.d.). She later became the superintendent of Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital’s training school. Through the nursing program she was able to establish the proper training nurses should have as well as how nursing staff worked with one another using delegation, so no nurse would have to endure full responsibilities for twenty-four hours a day (Hanink, n.d.). After a few years, Linda traveled to Japan on a missionary trip and ended up establishing their first nursing training school. She was also responsible for multiple training school in the U.S. because she wanted to change how nurses were being trained (Hanink, n.d.). After creating numerous training schools she became the first president of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools. This organization was used to standardize the curriculum that was being used in nurse training

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