Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole: Nursing Practice

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In today’s society nursing is seen as both a vocation and a profession. It requires knowledge, compassion and skill and is not for the faint of heart. Nurses are respected and trusted, as well as relied upon by people when they are at their most vulnerable. However this has not always been the case, as Florence Nightingale once put it nursing was left to “those who were too old, too weak, too drunken, too dirty, too stupid or too bad to do anything else” (1). It was not until the mid-1800’s that nursing was thought to require both skill and training and was not a respected profession (2). Opportunities for nursing outside the home were very limited as before 1880, the hospital treatment of illness was fairly rare. Where home services were adequate, a sick person was attended to by the family doctor and nursed at home either by female family members or highly trusted servants (2).
Nurses currently have to complete a 3 year degree course in one general area four of these are Adult, Child, Mental Health or Learning and Disability nursing. Each degree gives those training to be nurses the knowledge and skill they require to be successful and compassionate nurses in the future (3). The idea of training nurses originated from Florence Nightingale herself and on the 9th July 1860 the world’s first professional nurse training school, established by Miss Nightingale at St Thomas’ Hospital was opened and is still open to this day, more than 150 years later, it is currently part of King’s College London. (4)
Mary Seacole
Persistence –she didn’t give up, this is an important characteristic that is important in all nurses, she knew that nursing was her vocation/calling and she is remembered because she didn’t give up or give in.
Courage
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... http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/florence-nightingale-british-nurse-crimean-war-born.
22. Miasmas to Microbes + . word info. [Online] [Cited: 12 14, 2013.] http://wordinfo.info/unit/3603/s:air.
23. Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War. [Online] [Cited: 11 12, 2013.] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2920984/.
24. science museum . brought to life - Mary Seacole. [Online] [Cited: October 6, 2013.] http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/maryseacole.aspx.
25. Handwriting in the south African curriculum. South African education. south Africa : s.n., Developmental stages of learning , p. 8.
26. VICWEB. [Online] [Cited: 12 1, 2013.] http://www.victorianweb.org/history/crimea/florrie.html.
27. Campbell, Tim. the guardian . [Online] 9 2008. [Cited: 12 4, 2013.] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/oct/12/blackhistorymonth-nursing.

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