Nursing is a profession within the health care sector, focussed on the care of individual families and communities, so the may attain, maintain or recover optimal health and quality of life. Nurse is a person, educated and trained to take care of the sick or disabled, who should have communication skill and responsibilities.


Modern Nursing:
Modern Nursing is the oldest of the arts and youngest of the professions which has its origin in the Mothercare of helpless infants. Then it gradually enlarged from that of a mother to care of the sick human. As the days advanced, Nursing become evident that love and care alone were not enough to promote health and overcome the disease. So, skill and expertise and knowledge become essential for nursing. Hence head, heart and hands truly committed to become the foundation for modern nursing.

Florence Nightingale:

Florence Nightingale has been called the “founder of Modern Nursing “. She succeeded to a great extent to improve the health laws, to reform the hospitals to re-organize military medical services and establish nursing as profession with two missions:

1) Sick Nursing

2) Health Nursing

Florence Nightingale born on May 12th 1820 in Florence of Italy in a English family, her mother was Frances Nightingale who is from merchants background and her father William Shore Nightingale, was a wealthy land owner.

Early life of Florence:
As she was very brilliant in her childhood, she learnt German, French and Italian language and mastered in English. She was appreciated by everyone for helping the poor and needy neighbourhood.
Florence parents wanted her to become a famous person in the society, but this daughter was shikping those opportunities and searching the helpless to help. By the time she was 16years old, it was clear to her that nursing was her calling and she approached her parents to tell about her ambition, where they were not pleased, when she was 17-year-old parents started with marriage proposal but Florence Nightingale refused it and in 1844 she enrolled as a nursing student at Lutheran Hospital of Germany.
In the early 1850’s, Nightingale returned to London, where she took a nursing job in a Middlesex Hospital as a governess. Her performance there so impressed, her employer promoted her to superintendent within a year. During this hygienic practices and sanitation which helped to improve the health conditions.
In 1853 the Crimean war was broke out between British and Russian Empire where thousands of British soldiers were wounded and hospitalized. During this time Nightingale with her co-colleagues spent every working minute caring for the soldiers and comforting the patient by carrying a lamp.Because of this compassion, soldiers took to calling her”The Lady with Lamp”. After this she managed many higher posts and in 1860, she started a nursing training school at St. Thomas Hospital London. Through her leadership Nightingale nurses were enrolled and foundation stone was laid for the nursing training. So, May 12thFlorance Nightingale birthday was celebrated as International Nurses Day all over the globe.

Qualities of a Nurse:
Nursing is a carrier which calls for curtain special qualities: -
Love for the fellow men
Honesty and loyalty
Alertness and intelligent observation
Technical competence
Dependability and adjustability
Simplicity and empathy
Intelligence and common-sense
Good physical and mental health
Professional nurse:
She should be a graduate of a recognized Nursing School/ College, who has to meet the requirements for registered nurse in a state, in which she is licensed to practise.Different roles of a professional nurse:
1.Care giver
2.Advocate
3.Critical thinker
4.Teacher
5.Communicator
6.Manager
7.Researcher
8.Rehabilitator
9.Nurse as an infection controller

Why nursing is a noble profession:
“Caring may occur without curing, but curing cannot occur without caring”
(Watson 2003)
There are few noble professionsin this world. Practising medicine is one of them and being a nurse is perhaps the noblest in the house of medicine, because nurse cares for people in their darkest hours, often taking unfair blame and criticism from their patients and it is a purely people-oriented concept.
Nursing is a beautiful profession, if everybody respects it.
Being a nurse means being the one really at the bed side as doctors move in and out evaluating patients and writing orders like magic, those orders get translated into a task list, that includes
Evaluating the patient’s severity
Placing them on monitors
Starting IV’s
Drawing blood
Administering medications
Meeting personal needs of the patents and by this, a good nurse establishes rapport with a kind word or a joke, to put the patient at ease.
Nurses are also the ones who bears the patients anger, or clean them up when they vomit or soil themselves. They act as a surrogate family to patients. Hence nursing care is more appreciated than the doctors service.
A good nurse is always a building a block of a hospital. When the patients enter either a out-potent or inpatient department, first he will meet a person dressed with clean crisp white uniform, with a warm and friendly smile from the nurse, does wonders, to alloy the anxiety and put them at ease.
“A lot of nurses join nursing because it is a calling”. They are passionate about nursing and want to make a difference in peoples life. Nursing is not an easy job and it takes a special person to make that sacrifice.

Role of a Nurse in the critical areas:
Critical areas include:
Emergency unit
Intensive care unit
Post-operative unit
Labour room and Neo natal sectors.
In these areas specially trained nurse provides round the clock care and monitoring which includes
Taking regular blood test and co-relating the test results with treatment.
Recording the vital signs and giving drugs, fluids to patient.
Observing for bleeding on the operated area
Cleaning the patients mouth and washing the patient on the bed.
Putting drops in the patient’s eyes to make it easier to blink.
Care in the labour room:
It Includes checking the foetal heart sounds very often and helping the mother to bear the pain and explaining about the stages of labour.It also includes of providing emotional and psychological support during the time of delivery.
Care in the Neo-natal sector:


Skilled nurse will observe the baby for dehydration and checking the heart rate. She also monitors the temperature and observe for its skin condition for jaundice or burn due to high temperature in the incubator.
Patient experience:
As the patient recovers from his ill health by attaining the good nursing care, patient feels that nurse is a good friend where patient shares all his joys and sorrows and it helps him to become a member of the hospital family.
Nurse her family and patient:
All the time the nurse care for their patients selflessly after working for long hours undergreeling conditions to provide care. She also endeavours to provide excellent care no matter what they are going through in their lives. They have been called throughout history to provide care to sick, no matter the pay.
Patients will think that nurse is a healer like an angel who doesn’t have any problems or worry. But, in real life it is not so….They too have their own family, children’s and too many problems which they cannot reveal in front of patients.
Apart from caring, Nurses also help patient capable of meeting selfcare need a process that often includes patient teaching nurses are teaching a new mother, how to care for the neonate or teaching a new diabetic about insulin management and life style changes, by being aware of patient’s culture, economic status, educational background.

Challenges for nurses:
Stress: Due to the improper patient-nurseratio,creates the work load on the nurse, which put the nurse to stress in-order to accomplish the task.

Technological explosions: Use of computer technology in documentation, may hinder the nurse’s functions.

Globalization: due to the migration of well experienced nurses to other countries, there will be a shortage of nurses in the area of care.

Political expertise: Lack of nursing personnel in the political field, no health policies are formed and implemented. So post graduates from the nursing committee should be given opportunities to contest in the election.

Fake nurses: Without obtaining proper basic nursing education, some nurses just work for money making.

Acceptance in the society:  In some areas nurses are considered as only for giving injection and to look after the old age sick people at home and society consider them as merely a
care taker.

Domination by other professionals: Nurses are not allowed to take independent decisions in critical care, where she has depended on physician, which may delay in providing proper care to the client in emergency.

Lack of salary/ Incentives: Salary according to the type of work and promotion according to the years of experience are not counted.



In recent years we see the nursing care in the male hands. Many male nurses are pursuing nursing education and designing the higher posts in the health care sector. From ill health to health, death to life, the nurses who are revolving the patients from ill health to health, death to re-life and who are consoling the sick human kind, may god bless them all and thus let us have a healthy society. (photo courtesy from google images)