RN to BSN: Nursing through the Years
Posted By admin on October 17, 2011
RN to BSN is a tactical move in the part of a registered nurse (RN). A person with a Bachelor’s degree in Science (BS) means that that person has been educated and trained both in the major field of study and its related disciplines. Taking on a BSN program, therefore, puts a nurse in the best position for future promotions and better career options.
However, the true value of a nurse and the nursing profession is over and above technicalities and Bachelor degrees. No school can teach how one can truly and sincerely care for someone who needs comfort and relief. The best nurses are not the ones with the most college training; the best nurses are the mothers who selflessly and naturally nurse their young, centuries before nursing became a profession.
All women are instinctively nurses for their maternal instinct. They have been “wired” by Mother Nature to be extraordinarily caring and intuitive to the needs of the weak, sick, and helpless. The history of nursing is as old as the history of women, which is why it is said that nursing is “the oldest of arts and youngest of professions.”
The ancient Egyptians employed slaves that performed the functions of a nurse as we know it today. They tended the sick and assisted in childbirth. They were the first formal nurses in written history.
Meanwhile, the Greeks and Romans believed in deities that served as nurses. Women belonging to the family of Asklepios were said to be nurses sent by their mythological gods. In other ancient cultures, however, it was the prostitutes who doubled as nurses.
The earliest and now still most popular nurse in history is Florence Nightingale, also known in history as the “Lady with the Lamp”. It is not true, though, that her selfless service and care for the wounded during the Crimean War in 1853 earned her the title as the world’s first nurse. She entered nursing in 1844, and so there were other nurses like her before and during the Crimean War.
Observers of that war called Nightingale as a “ministering angel”, which can be said the same of modern-day nurses. She was also referred to as the “Lady with the Lamp” after her habit of checking with the wounded in the dead of night, when all medical officers have gone to sleep. Today, medical and nursing care in hospitals goes round the clock, 24/7.
On July 9, 1860, Nightingale put up a special school for nurses, the Nightingale Training School at Saint Thomas’ Hospital in London. This signaled the beginning of modern nursing as a healthcare profession. In 1859, Nightingale wrote the book “Notes on Nursing”, which she used as her training school’s curriculum.
“Notes on Nursing” outlived its author and was used by nursing schools the world over until the 1970s. It is now considered a classic introduction to Nursing. Her training school still stands today, but is now called “Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery” at King’s College London.
Today, nursing is an important component in healthcare, and nurses are medical professionals equaling the significance of doctors. RN-BSN programs (Registered Nurse to Bachelor of Science) are offered to nurses to better equip them as professionals. In the tradition set forth by Florence Nightingale, nurses are advised to move from RN to BSN in order to more effectively care for the sick.
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