A century ago, nobody would have dreamed that nursing education could have changed so much. From the hospital-based programs of the early 1900s to the PhD programs of today, nursing history reflects a series of often slow, but always deliberate, steps to increasing independence and professionalism.
At the turn of the century, all nursing education was done within the hospital setting. Student nurses were responsible for virtually all the care of the hospital’s patients, working more than 50 hours a week, with two half days off. Upon graduation, a very few might be offered the opportunity to stay on to become one of two or three trained nurses working at the hospital. With the industrial revolution, hospitals became more valuable and saw women as slave labor and really didn’t worry much about education.
Modern nursing began in the mid-19th century with the advent of the Nightingale training schools for nurses. In the United States, the Spanish-American War and, later, World War I established the need for more nurses in both military and civilian life. As a result, nursing schools increased their enrollments, and several new programs were developed. In 1920 a study funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and known as the Goldmark Report recommended that schools of nursing be independent of hospitals and that students no longer be exploited as cheap labor. Following the publication of this report, several university schools of nursing were opened (Philip, 2003).
During the depression of the 1930s, many nurses were unemployed, and the number of schools declined. World War II, however, brought about another increased demand for nurses. The Cadet Nurse Corps, established in 1943, subsidized nursing education for thousands of young people who agreed to engage in nursing for the duration of the war (Philip, 2003). Since the end of World War II.....
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