Education for registered nurses. A comparative analysis of theory and clinical practice.

Abstract

The first schools of nursing in the United States were established in the early 1870's in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York. They emerged in response to a heightened sense of social responsibility for community health and welfare. The Crimean War and the work of Florence Nightingale, followed by the US Civil War, had focused the attention of this nation on the need for nurses and the necessity of devising a system for their education. Adopting the Nightingale pattern, early schools were created independently of hospitals, but lacking financial endowment were soon absorbed by the institutions with which they were associated. The effect was to inextricably bind nursing education to the hospital setting. In the intervening 100 years, several hundred hospital or diploma schools of nursing have developed. To keep pace with changing educational patterns and needs, the baccalaureate nursing program in the university setting and, more recently, the junior college