There are over 5 million nurses in the United States. They work in hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices, patient homes, special care facilities, prisons and military bases. If you’re going to summer camp, there’s probably a nurse on staff. Your school is likely to have one too. Nurses make up the largest share of healthcare professionals in the United States and around the world.
Thursday is International Nurses Day, an annual celebration of how nurses improve our lives. This date was chosen because it is the anniversary of the birth in 1820 of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. In the United States, May 12 is also the last day of National Nurses Week, a time to remember — and thank — these professionals for all they do.
Nursing has not always been a respected profession. In the mid-1800s, when Nightingale was growing up, wealthy British families like his wanted only one “job” for their daughters: to marry and raise a family. Educated at home, Nightingale excelled in mathematics and languages. She could read and write six languages from an early age. As a teenager, she began to feel “calls from God” to alleviate human suffering, she said. She thought becoming a nurse was the best way to do it.
Her parents said no, that breastfeeding was not appropriate for a young woman of her social class, but she persisted. At the age of 30, she traveled to Germany to train as a nurse. In 1853 she was in charge of a hospital in London for governesses, women who could not afford private care but who would not consider going to a public institution.
Nightingale’s worldwide fame as a nurse stemmed from the Crimean War (1853-1856), in which Russia fought the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France. When the British learned of the terrible conditions in their military hospitals – where far more soldiers died of infections than war wounds – they demanded change. Nightingale was asked to lead a group of 38 nurses at Scutari Military Field Hospital in present-day Istanbul, Turkey.
The establishment was crowded and dirty. There were few medicines and no soap, clean linen or drinking water. The rats were running under the beds. Lice and fleas were everywhere. Some of the men who ran the hospital considered Nightingale to be unfeminine and a nuisance, but she kept pushing while her nurses worked to clean up the place and care for patients.
Healthy food, clean clothes, medicine and other supplies were provided. A special team has arrived from Britain to flush out the sewers and improve the air circulation inside. The hospital’s death rate has dropped significantly. Nightingale’s working day never ended. At night, she roamed the wards comforting the wounded, sometimes writing letters home for them. They called her “the Lady with the Lamp” and “the Crimean Angel”.
She did this despite falling ill shortly after arriving at the hospital in 1855. There was no effective treatment for her illness, probably caused by drinking tainted milk, and this left her has afflicted for decades. Yet she continued to work. She created a statistical chart showing how better hygiene in hospitals saves lives.
She established the world’s first school of professional nursing, now part of King’s College London. The United States consulted her about her field hospitals during the Civil War, and Indian officials sought her advice on public health matters. Her books on hospitals and nursing are still read by healthcare workers today, 112 years after her death.
Thanks to Nightingale, the public has come to regard nursing as an important and honorable profession, which the coronavirus pandemic has underscored again. And it’s not just a job for women: 10% of nurses today are men, according to the World Health Organization. This too is something to celebrate on International Nurses Day.
Wanted: more nurses
There are four times as many nurses in the United States as doctors. Depending on their education, they have various duties and titles, including Registered Nurse (RN), Nurse Practitioner (NP), Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN), and School Nurse. Although the total – over 5 million – seems like a lot, there is a worrying shortage of nurses in this country and elsewhere.
An aging population means more people need more care. At the same time, more than one-fifth of American nurses plan to retire within the next five years. The pandemic has clouded predictions of how many nurses will be needed in the future. Some who left their jobs due to burnout or other reasons might come back, but others might not.
In 2020, the US government projected that there would be 194,500 job openings for RNs each year through 2030. Worldwide, there is a shortage of 5.9 million nurses. Nursing programs want to close the gap, but many have lost educators and funds. Due to insufficient resources, schools had to turn away qualified students. Some states want to change the requirements to attract more people to the nursing profession and retain those who are already there.
