DEMATA, ANDREA MIKAELA R.

BSN1E

The history of professional nursing began with Florence Nightingale. It was

Nightingale who envisioned nurses as a body of educated women at a time when

women were neither educated nor employed in public service. Following her service of

organizing and caring for the wounded in Scutari, during the Crimean War, her vision

and establishment of a School of Nursing at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London marked the

birth of modern nursing. Nightingale’s pioneering activities in nursing practice and

subsequent writings describing nursing education became a guide for establishing

nursing schools in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century (Kalisch &

Kalisch, 2003; Nightingale, 1859/1969). Nursing began with a strong emphasis on

practice, but throughout the century, nurses worked toward the development of nursing

as a profession through successive periods recognized as historical eras (Alligood,

2006a).

Nursing theories serve as the backbone of the nursing research that can further

turn into a nursing practice when proven reliable. These theories are essential for every

nurses for this aids their purpose because they’ve been given the permission to be a

nurse, and that they should faithfully bow to give their life to serve humanity. The health

and life of their patient will be their priority. A nurse is and should faithfully carry out their

duties towards their patients regardless of their race, religion or nationality. These

theories are therefore  vital because it helps generate further knowledge and indicate in

which direction should nursing develop in the future.

DEMATA, ANDREA MIKAELA R. BSN1E