Nursing Education, History of

Nance Cunningham

Prior to the 1800s in both the United States and England, most nursing education occurred within families or religious institutions such as the Sisters of Charity. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, nursing started to be professionalized, and methods of training nurses began to evolve. This entry looks at issues of concern to nursing educators, beginning in the late 1800s, including the role of nurses in both hospitals and the community and appropriate qualifications for nursing education applicants, nursing graduates, and nursing educators. During the 1800s, as long as hospitals were primarily charity institutions that middle-class families tried not to use, nursing tended to be accomplished either by working-class women who had few choices about work or life circumstances or by the ambulatory patients themselves. As medical science improved, especially in the areas of hygiene and nutrition, hospitals became places where middle-class people would seek care or to improve ...

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