Nursing: Years Ago and Today

Nursing : Years Ago and Today

2006

The history of nursing , a segment of the white collar service sector reflects the general trends in the transformation of work that gave rise to the new , dependent , salaried , white collar workforce , in conflict over the construct of professionalism . Although previously independent practitioners , by the end of World War II , a decisive majority of nurses were forced to find employment in the newly emerging bureaucratic hospitals as their opportunities for autonomous nurse-patient relationships diminished (Melosh 32 . In the nation 's hospitals , nurses were subject

to processes of bureaucratic control very much like those described by Edwards for both production and nonproduction workers (Edwards 17 . Invisible mechanisms of control , including the human capital notion of professionalism and the use of written rules to govern nurses ' tasks and supervision , were invoked to discipline this white collar workforce . Historically , nurses ' responses to these constraints have been filled with conflict

In the 18th century , nursing was merely another of women 's domestic chores . By the early 19th century , however , nursing had emerged as an occupation performed by respectable working-class women , primarily widows and spinsters . It was a specialty within domestic service consisting primarily of cleaning a patient 's body , linen , and dressings This kind of labor was considered by most 19th-century men and women as an extension of woman 's "natural " biological capacity for domesticity docility , nurturance , and willingness to sacrifice (Berg 21

A fine line separated the 19th-century nurse from the domestic servant as both were expected to perform household chores . By 1868 , however they were more clearly differentiated by salary the nurse earned 1 .00 to 2 .00 a day whereas the servant earned only 2 .22 per week (Reverby 9 . Because of the close association with dirty domestic work , few middle-class women entered nursing . Until the Civil War , nursing remained an occupation performed by poor , older , single women with no formal education or training . These women were often drawn from rural areas into the cities in search of paid work , where their options were generally sewing , lodging bs , domestic service , or nursing . By 1870 , there were over 10 ,000 women officially employed as nurses in the United States

Until the 20th century , hospital nursing was less prevalent than household nursing since most births , deaths , and illnesses occurred in the home . The majority of Americans did not see the inside of a hospital until the turn of the century . Hospitals were barely hospitals as we now know them . They were charitable institutions built by philanthropists at the end of the 18th century for the poor , the socially marginal , or the unemployed . Indeed , many hospitals evolved out of public almshouses Patients in both public and voluntary hospitals were incarcerated for dependence as much as for disease in the 1870s (Vogel 105 , and their hospital stay was often for weeks or months , not days . Impermeable walls and guarded gates surrounded the institutions , enabling hospitals to assert some control over the working class , immigrant , or destitute patient

Although benevolent...