Nurse Past, Present and Future: the Making of the Modern Nursing

Nurse: Past, Present and Future: The Making of the Modern Nurse examines the culture of nursing on all levels, from its historical development to its status today. The book highlights the power and value of nurses worldwide, and traces the evolution of nursing as a career. There are currently 35 million nurses worldwide. They make up the majority of hospital and provide more primary care to patients than any other class of healthcare provider.

There is a shortage of nurse in the UK, USA, Canada and a number of other developed countries. Currently only 20 per cent of the nurses in Europe are male, enforcing the stereotypical view of nursing being a female profession. Nurse: Past, Present and Future opens with a look at the importance of nursing to health systems and economics across the world, including the impact of nurse migration patterns on employment demographics. This opening chapter includes a forward-looking essay exploring the prospects and pitfalls of workforce mobility.

The second chapter traces the evolution of the nurse’s social standing, appearance, education and skill set, and examines some of the key debates now underway. These are put into context with a look at how nursing has progressed through the twentieth century in response to changes in medicine and society. The focus then shifts to the workplace: looking at the vast number of settings that nurses practice in, from patient homes to war-zone triage and high-tech hospitals to call centres, and how the current developments taking place in these settings are redefining how nurses work now.

The relationship between nurses, doctors and others involved in healthcare is discussed, exploring the working dynamics in previous and current generations of nurses with a contribution looking at nurse-doctor relations in twenty-first century patient care. Lastly, the final chapter traces the trajectories of a selection of nurses in order to convey the aspirations, opportunities, frustrations and accomplishments that define their careers.

Thoroughly illustrated, comprehensive and global in scope, Nurse is the irst book of its kind, dedicated to the past, present and future of the culture of nursing. AUTHOR: Kate Trant is a design historian and research advisor at the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, London, UK. She is the author of several books on contemporary design. She has recently focused on aspects of hospital design and healthcare environments. Sue Usher is Director of the Health Policy Division, Parkhurst Ltd, Montreal, QC. She is the editor and author of numerous paper and books on a wide range of healthcare topics. ILLUSTRATIONS 157 colour & b/w illustrations *