Short answers, pulled from the story.
Florence Nightingale laid the foundations of professional nursing after the Crimean War, guided by a statistical study of sanitation in India. Her Notes on Nursing was published in 1859, and the Nightingale model of education spread widely in Europe and North America after 1870.
Nursing integrates the art and science of caring and focuses on the protection, promotion, and optimization of health, prevention of illness and injury, facilitation of healing, and alleviation of suffering. Nurses comprise the largest component of most healthcare environments and develop plans of care collaboratively with physicians, patients, and families.
Linda Richards was officially the first professionally trained nurse in the United States, graduating in 1873 from the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. She later established nursing schools in both the United States and Japan.
A 2022 global McKinsey and Company survey found that between 28% and 38% of nurses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Japan, and France said they were likely to leave direct patient care within a year. Nurses face high occupational stress, with burnout at 40% and emotional exhaustion at 43.2%.
Nurses face high occupational stress, musculoskeletal injuries, and workplace violence. Up to 72% of nurses report non-specific low back pain, and in the US in 2011-57% reported being threatened at work while 17% were physically assaulted, with patients responsible for 80% of serious violent incidents.
During the Reformation, Protestant reformers shut down monasteries and convents, and nuns who had served as nurses were given pensions or told to marry and stay home. Care passed to the inexperienced, and the nursing profession in Europe was extinguished for approximately 200 years.
According to the WHO's 2020 State of the World's Nursing, approximately 90% of the nursing workforce is female. Notable exceptions include Francophone Africa, where countries such as Benin, Cameroon, and Senegal have more male than female nurses.