Nursing shortage and solutions to help the problem

Nursing Shortage

2007

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

The post-Civil War years , characterized by remarkable economic growth the rise of industrial corporations , the decline of small entrepreneurs and the emergence of urban America , engendered the expansion of relief organizations and the development of new charity organizations . Both were controlled in large part by middle- and upper-class female reformers . These women , many of whom had participated in organized nursing during the Civil War , focused on reforming the moral character of the poor , soiled by the ravages of urban society (Lubove 4-5 . The expansion of the charity organization movement represented another response by a troubled middle class to the social dislocation of the post-Civil War industrial city "Charity organization was a crusade to save the city from itself and from the evils of pauperism and class antagonism . It was an instrument of social control for the conservative middle class (Lubove...