Nursing Education in China

Abstract

OVER sixty years ago, modern nursing was introduced in China by the same missionaries from the Western countries who introduced Western medicine, Christianity, and modern education for both boys and girls. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, after the Boxer Rebellion, the mission societies were allowed to At the beginning, the hospitals had very few patients because the Chinese people were suspicious of Western medicine. There were few students in the nursing schools because nursing consisted largely of manual work, and manual labor was looked down upon in China. The idea of girls caring for sick strangers was just not acceptable to Chinese society; for women to take care of male patients was considered indecent and immoral. Formal education for girls had just been introduced, and there were very few girls who had even primary education. And Christianity was a new religion; for a girl to enter a new foreign missionary school was considered dangerousshe might become semiforeign herself and come to believe in the foreign religion. Many mission nursing schools took in boys as well as girls as students whenever they could find them. As education for girls became more popular, some graduates of the missions' elementary and secondary schools for girls began to enter the nursing schools. There were no nursing or medical textbooks. The missionary nurses did their best by translating their own English texts into Chinese. That was the beginning of nursing education in China.