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Some people wonder why we look back at the past, but
without it, there is no today. And without today, there
is no future. For our nursing history, we tend to look
back to its beginnings with Florence Nightingale, although
nursing can be traced to biblical times as an act of
commitment if not as a profession. But it was Nightingale
who led us into seeing nursing as a profession that
required specific education and, as with other professions,
in need of constant self-improvement.
She once said, "For us who nurse, our nursing
is a thing, which, unless in it we are making progress
every year, every month, every week, take my word for
it, we are going back." Going back was never on
her agenda and she led the movement to take nursing
forward. She had many of the same problems that we face
today: too few staff, too many patients, doctors who
thought she was trying to take over their jobs, too
few resources, too little pay, hours that were long
and people who thought the way it was done in the past
was how it always should be. Linda Richards (1841-1930),
the first trained nurse in America, not only improved
nursing in the United States, but in other countries
as well.
Throughout the 20th century, nursing has continued
to make progress, yet all the while having to work over,
under and around many of the same problems. And what
of tomorrow? In my participation with the American Nephrology
Nurses' Association (I once had the honor of being its
president and now have the honor of being editor of
its journal), I recently had the chance to get to know
a young nurse who wasn't even born when I started my
nursing career. She inspired me and filled me with hope
for our future. A family nurse practitioner of two years,
she sees nursing as it will be.
I have found the same spirit in the new graduate nurses
that I have the privilege to work with in NURSEWEEK's
Nursing Odyssey project, in which we follow new graduates
in their first year in the field. This generation of
nurses, the first of the 21st century-using energy,
hope and determination-will build the nursing profession
of tomorrow. Because of young nurses like these, I remain
confident in the success of our profession.
Our continued success can be attributed to a foundation
built on a solid set of values. Nurses care about people.
Richards, in describing the future of nursing, once
said, "Fifty years from now, nurses will look back
and say that we did not know very much about nursing
in the first decade of the 20th century, even with the
25 years of pioneer work that lay behind us. Nevertheless,
the more faithfully each of us does her own individual
work of today, the more rapid will be the growth of
this great movement, the art of caring for the sick,
which has already exercised so vast an influence in
all countries on the social conditions of the state
and of the city and of the town, and on the social customs
of the family and the neighborhood."
If you were to change "20th" to "21st"
century, the same could be said today.
Discuss this and other topics with your colleagues
at www.nurseweek.com/rnvillage.
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