Nurse education

Nurse education consists of the theoretical and practical training provided to nurses with the purpose to prepare them for their duties as nursing care professionals. This education is provided to student nurses by experienced nurses and other medical professionals who have qualified or experienced for educational tasks, traditionally in a type of professional school known as a nursing school or college of nursing. Most countries offer nurse education courses that can be relevant to general nursing or to specialized areas including mental health nursing, pediatric nursing, and post-operative nursing. Nurse education also provides post-qualification courses in specialist subjects within nursing.
A nursing student can be enrolled in a program that leads to a diploma, an associate degree, or a Bachelor of Science in nursing.

Historical background

During past decades, the changes in education have replaced the more practically focused, but often ritualistic, training structure of conventional preparation. Nurse education integrates today a broader awareness of other disciplines allied to medicine, often involving inter-professional education, and the utilization of research when making clinical and managerial decisions. Orthodox training can be argued to have offered a more intense practical skills base, but emphasized the handmaiden relationship with the physician. This is now outmoded, and the impact of nurse education is to develop a confident, inquiring graduate who contributes to the care team as an equal. In some countries, not all qualification courses have graduate status.
Traditionally, from the times prior to Florence Nightingale, nursing was seen as an apprenticeship, often undertaken in religious institutes such as convents by young women, although there has always been a proportion of male nurses, especially in mental health services.
In 1859, Valérie de Gasparin and her Husband Agénor de Gasparin opens the first nursing school in the world in Lausanne, Switzerland :
Some other nurses at that time, notably Ethel Gordon Fenwick, were in favor of formalized nursing registration and curricula that were formally based in higher education and not within the confines of hospitals.
Nurse education in the United States is conducted within university schools, although it is unclear who offered the first degree level program. So far as known Yale School of Nursing became the first autonomous school of nursing in the United States in 1923.
In November 1955, a World Health Organization study group on the education of nurses met in Brussels and made several recommendations, including that "At least one experimental school of nursing be set up in each country." In the UK, the first department of Nursing Studies at the University of Edinburgh was established in 1956, with a five-year integrated degree programme introduced in 1960. Several other universities across the UK during the 1960s. In 1974 La Trobe University commenced the first nursing course in Australia.

United Kingdom

was one of the pioneers in establishing the idea of nursing schools from her base at St Thomas' Hospital, London in 1860 when she opened the 'Nightingale Training School for Nurses', now part of King's College London. Her intention was to train nurses to a qualified and specialized level, with the key aim of learning to develop observation skills and sensitivity to patient needs, then allow them to work in hospital posts across the United Kingdom and abroad. Her influence flourished and nursing is now a course taught at a number of British universities.
Rebecca Strong OBE started a Preliminary Training School for Nurses at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1893. She had been working as a Matron there since 1879. This 'block apprenticeship' programme had separate classroom based teaching and practical periods on the wards. Two courses were arranged in conjunction with the Professors of St. Mungo's College - a three-month course consisting of elementary Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene. If these exams were passed a second course was given which consisted of Medicine, Surgery and Practical Nursing. The prospective nurse was then able to enter the hospital with this theoretical knowledge. Strong was supported by the pioneering surgeon Sir William Macewen.
Eva Luckes, Matron of The London Hospital was mentored by Florence Nightingale, and was her friend and disciple.Eva Luckes was another innovator in nurse training and education and introduced the Preliminary Training School concept to England in 1895. This was adopted as an element of mandatory training programme following the 1919 Nurse Registration Act. Eva Luckes produced over 470 matrons who filled posts at home and abroad, including three who filled the top positions in Military Nursing, Ethel Becher, Sarah Oram and Maud McCarthy. Luckes's other matrons also spread her style of "Nightingale nursing" to voluntary hospitals and infirmaries both in the provinces and London. They included Annie McIntosh, Matron of St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1910–1927.
Apart from the nursing school of King's College London, the direct descendant of Nightingale's school, the University of Manchester was one of the first English institutions to offer the course at degree level. A new building for the Manchester Medical School was opened in the early 1970s and degree courses in nursing were established about the same time. Nursing education at the university expanded greatly in 1996 when a new School of Nursing and Midwifery was created by transferring the Manchester College of Midwifery and Nursing into the university's Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing.
Nursing education in the United Kingdom was significantly influenced by the Briggs Report of 1972. This set a new agenda for nursing and nurse education and sought to develop a career progression away from the bedside into education, management and research. In addition, the 1979 Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors Act provided the legal mechanism for change. This saw a gradual movement away from practice-based training towards a college-based system of education, from the nurse apprentice to the supernumerary nurse.
Entry level courses, sought by most universities, are often five Standard Grades/GCSEs, including English, maths and a science, and two Highers/A-Levels. Mature students, over the age of twenty-one, have the option of entering upon completion of a college Access course, and experience in jobs related to health/nursing assistance are also worthy for consideration into the course.
Currently, nursing is a three-year course in the UK, with students choosing the branch that they want to study, e.g., adult, child, mental health, or learning disability; or combinations of two. The course consists of a balance between coursework in classes and practical placements in a health care setting. The first year is foundation, where students learn anatomy and physiology and basic health care. Newly qualified nurses then have to register with the Nursing and Midwifery Council in order to apply for jobs and legally practice.

United States

The history of nursing education had a long and varied role in the United States. Before the late 1800s little formal education was available to train nursing students. Education was primarily based on an apprenticeship with a senior nurse who taught bedside care within a hospital or clinic setting. Over time this model changed dramatically. A short chronology of Schools of Nursing in the United States is:
Image:Csusnursingpin.jpg|thumb|right|220px|The nursing pin awarded to graduates of the nursing school at Sacramento State University in the USA.

In 1873, the Bellevue Hospital School of Nursing, of New York City, was founded. It was the first school of nursing in the United States to be founded on the principles of nursing established by Florence Nightingale. The School operated at Bellevue Hospital until its closure in 1969.
1883: The Medical University of South Carolina College of Nursing has been traced to its beginning in 1883 when the South Carolina Training School for Nurses was established at the request of Roper Hospital in Charleston, SC. Due to an earthquake in 1886 which destroyed the City Hospital, the effort only lasted a few years. However, once the new hospital was built the nursing program was reestablished in 1895 as the Charleston Training School. In 1916, the Board of Commissioners of the Roper Hospital proposed the transfer of the training school to the Medical College of the State of South Carolina, whose school of medicine had been established in Charleston in 1824 and whose faculty was already providing most of the nursing instruction. The proposal was accepted by both the hospital and the Medical College, and in 1919 the Roper Hospital Training School for Nurses became the School of Nursing of the Medical College of the State of South Carolina. In 1969 when the Medical College was designated the Medical University of South Carolina, the School of Nursing became the College of Nursing.
1889: The University of Maryland School of Nursing was founded with Louisa Parsons as temporary head. She was trained at the Nightingale Fund School at St. Thomas' Hospital in London and was decorated for her service in several conflicts. UMSON is one of the oldest and largest nursing schools in the United States.
1889: The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing was founded in conjunction with the creation of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. As one of the earliest hospital-based nursing schools in the United States school leaders consulted with Florence Nightingale on the program of education. These same nurse leaders also established what would become the National League for Nursing Education and helped in establishing the American Nurses Association.
In 1909, the University of Minnesota offered the first university based nursing program. It offered the first Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree and graduated the first bachelor's degree educated nurse.
By 1916, 13 universities and 3 colleges had developed bachelor's nursing degree programs.
In 1923, the Yale School of Nursing was founded. It became the first School of Nursing to adopt the educational standards from the 1923 Goldmark Report that was requested by the Rockefeller Foundation. The curriculum was based on an educational plan rather than on hospital service needs.
In 1956, the Columbia University School of Nursing became the first in the United States to grant a master's degree in a clinical nursing specialty.