# data[].attributes.body
Nursing is a career where you care for patients from the age of newborn to over 100. While they also do things like taking vitals, checking on patients, and finding the correct prescription for a patient.

# data[].attributes.body
Nursing Certificate
Learning of basic patient care. Typically to train students to pass the licencing test to become licensed practitioner nurse.

Associate of Science in Nursing (ASN)
This is the minimum educational requirements. You don't really have access to do much with an associate degree. These programs include basic courses in medical terminology, patient care, and life sciences.   - Students get classroom and clinical training.

Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN)
Adequate nursing training. Greater clinical experiences and stronger more in-depth education. Allows students to study multiple specialized areas of nursing (pediatrics, geriatrics, and mental health nursing).

Masters of Science in Nursing (MSN)
Intended for nursing professionals interested in supervisory positions.
-Nurse Practitioners, Nurse Specialists, Nursing Instructors often require to have a master's degree.

https://study.com/nursing_training.html

# data[].attributes.body
1. Experience in caring for patients, performing diagnostic medical testes, and communicating with doctors.
2. Need a nursing certificate. (May be more according to state)
3. CPR Certification
4. Passing the NCLEX

Register Nurses:
2- year degree, but a 4 year bachelors degree is more common and more beneficial.

# data[].attributes.body
(Click link for information)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Registered Nurse (RN), Emergency Room Hourly Pay | PayScale

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The average hourly pay for a Registered Nurse (RN), Emergency Room is $63,736. Visit PayScale to research Registered Nurse (RN), Emergency Room hourly pay by city, experience, skill, employer, and more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Day in the Life of an ICU Nurse - Rook

# data[].attributes.headline
THE BEST NURSING Colleges YOU Can Attend:

# data[].attributes.subject
THE BEST NURSING Colleges YOU Can Attend:

# data[].attributes.body
1. University of Pennsylvania  - 4 year
Net Price: $22,944
SAT: 1380-1570
2. Emory University (Atlanta, GA)  -  4 year
Net Price: $24,804
SAT: 1290-1500
3. University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)  -  4 year
Net Price: $16,107
SAT: 1310-1500
4. Villanova university (PA)  -  4 year
Net Price: $33,270
SAT: 1220-1420
5. Saint Louis University  (St. Louis, MO)  -  4 year
Net Price:  $33,222
SAT: 1110-1330
6. University of Portland (OR)  -  4 year
Net Price: $31,736
SAT: 1080-1300
7. Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI)  -  4 year
Net Price: $25,446
SAT: 1050-1285
8. University of Detroit Mercy (MI)  -  4 year
Net Price: $22,382
SAT: 950-1280
9. Jacksonville University (FL)  -  4 year
Net Price: $29,004
SAT: 910-1110
10. Winona State University (Winona, MN)  -  4 year
Net Price: $17,109
SAT: 790-1070

+ There are many more colleges that have nursing programs.
+ There are also community colleges offering studies in nursing.
+ Niche.com/ has more information on the other colleges and more!

https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/best-colleges-for-nursing/

# data[].attributes.body
For me, I would like to attend Kirtland Community College (KCC) in the fall of 2019. When I go there, I will be getting my 4 year degree in nursing of science.
I'm not completely sure if I will transfer to a university, but I will be volunteering at the Grayling Hospital, which isn't far from the college I will take classes at.

# data[].attributes.headline
Companies the hire people in this career choice:   (In/Out of Michigan)

# data[].attributes.subject
Companies the hire people in this career choice:   (In/Out of Michigan)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What makes a company one of the "best" places to work is, of course, highly subjective. For some, a top-notch workplace is all about friendly coworkers and flexible hours; for others, salary and benefits are all that matter.

For Minority Nurse's Best Companies survey, we asked readers to tell us what was most important to them as nursing professionals. Benefits, salary, and opportunity for advancement were among the top factors for our survey respondents, while workplace size was much less important. Magnet recognition wasn't a primary concern for most readers, but many said they did consider it when looking at potential employers. The majority of the respondents said that their current workplace is not Magnet certified.

In their current jobs, readers were most satisfied with their workplace environment, workplace size (in terms of the number of employees), and benefits (including retirement funds and health insurance). They were least satisfied with opportunities for advancement, job perks (such as education reimbursement and on-site childcare), and salary. As far as the latter, it's worth noting that Minority Nurse's Salary Survey, published in the Spring 2013 issue, found that our readers' average salaries had increased at a higher rate than inflation in the last five years. Still, many who answered our survey clearly see a need for improvement.

We created our top-25 list by sending an online questionnaire to Minority Nurse subscribers. We received more than 1,000 responses from across the country. California, New York, Texas, and Florida were the most heavily represented states among survey takers. Rated workplaces were split fairly evenly between large, medium, and small organizations.

Companies that scored well comprise a variety of nursing workplaces, with large metropolitan hospitals and networks-including New York's North Shore-LIJ Health System, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge-being the most well-represented. Government agencies (both federal and local) also appear on the list, as well as wide-ranging networks such as Kaiser Permanente and Mayo Clinic. Nonprofit and government entities outweigh for-profit companies on our final list.

The 25 companies listed alphabetically below scored best in terms of correlation between what nurses are looking for and what their employers are offering. Most of these organizations are actively recruiting, and we've provided links to job listings for anyone looking to make a change.

______________________________________
Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina
Location: Headquarters in Chapel Hill, NC

Number of nursing employees: Varies by division (approximately 4,000 total employees)

About the company: Part of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, BCBS North Carolina provides insurance and medical care for 3.7 million people in North Carolina. Nursing jobs here do not generally involve medical care; nurses are involved with medical review, training, claim resolution, and case management.
______________________________________ Carolinas HealthCare System
Website: carolinashealthcare.org Location: Headquarters in Charlotte, NC

Number of nursing employees: Varies by location (approximately 60,000 total employees)

About the company: This sprawling network of facilities throughout North Carolina and South Carolina includes a wide range of medical workplaces, including hospitals, rehabilitation centers, nursing homes, and hospice care. Its Levine Children's Hospital is ranked as one of the nation's best pediatric hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, and Charlotte Parent Magazine named it one of the area's "Top 40 Family-Friendly Employers."

Contact: Job listings are available at careers.carolinashealthcare.org
______________________________________ Cedars-Sinai
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Number of nursing employees: Approximately 2,700

About the company: Cedars-Sinai has been a presence in Los Angeles since 1902. The company's hospital, research facility, and educational center has a patient base of more than 16,000, and it's nationally ranked in several specialties, including cardiology, gastroenterology, and orthopedics. More heart transplants are performed here annually than at any other facility in the world.
______________________________________ DaVita
Location: Headquarters in Denver, CO

Number of nursing employees: Varies by location (approximately 53,000 total employees)

About the company: In 1999, this kidney-care company was known as Total Renal Care; it was rechristened DaVita-"giving life" in Italian-by its employees. Today, DaVita operates more than 2,000 outpatient dialysis centers in the US, offering medical services as well as counseling, education, and prescription management. It's ranked No. 311 on the Fortune 500, and has racked up a number of accolades for its community outreach efforts, environmental sustainability programs, and workplace benefits.
______________________________________ Fresenius Medical Care North America
Location: Headquarters in Waltham, MA

Number of nursing employees: Varies by division (55,000 total employees in the US)
______________________________________ Howard University Hospital
Location: Washington, DC

Number of nursing employees: Approximately 500

About the company: This comprehensive medical care facility was founded in 1862 as Freedman's Hospital, which provided medical care for freed slaves who had been denied elsewhere. Today, it's housed in a former army barracks on the campus of the historically black Howard University, and offers a wide variety of services and specialties, and includes a Level 1 trauma center.
______________________________________ Indiana University Health
Location: Facilities throughout Indiana

Number of nursing employees: Varies by facility (36,000 total employees)

Contact: Job listings are available at iuhealth.org/careers/nursing-careers
______________________________________ Kaiser Permanente
Website: healthy.kaiserpermanente.org

Location: Headquarters in Oakland, CA, with facilities in California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, and Washington, DC

Number of nursing employees: Varies by facility (approximately 180,000 total employees)

About the company: Founded in 1945, Kaiser Permanente operates more than 600 interconnected but independently managed medical facilities in the US. One respondent to our survey praised Kaiser Permanente's "strong promotion of diversity, [including] gender, sexuality, race, and religion."
______________________________________ Los Angeles County Department of Health Services
Location: Los Angeles County, CA

Number of nursing employees: Varies by facility

About the company: Los Angeles County Department of Health Services is the second-largest municipal health care system in the country. It operates in the most populous county in the US, and provides medical care and services to approximately 800,000 patients annually at several hospitals and other medical centers.
______________________________________ Maimonides Medical Center
Number of nursing employees: Approximately 1,400

About the company: More than half of the people living in the communities served by this New York City hospital are foreign-born, and the hospital prides itself on its cultural diversity-more than 70 languages are spoken by the staff. In 2011, Maimonides opened a facility devoted entirely to breast cancer treatment, and its Heart & Vascular Center underwent a recent major renovation and expansion.
______________________________________ Mayo Clinic
Location: Headquarters in Rochester, MN, with additional facilities throughout the US, including large centers in Jacksonville, FL, and Phoenix, AZ

Number of nursing employees: Varies by facility (approximately 42,000 employees at its main facilities)
______________________________________ Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center
Number of nursing employees: Approximately 1,500

About the company: This renowned teaching hospital (affiliated with the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Medical School) is the oldest institution in the massive Texas Medical Center, and the flagship hospital in the vast Memorial Hermann network throughout Texas. Its Level 1 trauma center sees more than 40,000 patients annually, and its Children's Hospital is one of the top-ranked pediatric facilities nationwide.
______________________________________ Montefiore Medical Center
Number of nursing employees: Approximately 3,000
______________________________________ Mount Sinai Health System
Number of nursing employees: Varies by facility (36,000 total employees)

About the company: In 2013, two major NYC medical institutions-Continuum Health Partners and Mount Sinai Medical Center-merged to form this massive network, which is now the largest nongovernment employer in New York. It includes seven major hospitals (Beth Israel Medical Center, Beth Israel Brooklyn, the Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Queens, New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, Roosevelt Hospital, and St. Luke's Hospital) as well as more than 400 ambulatory care units and other medical facilities spread across New York City. Mount Sinai also includes the Center for Nursing Research and Education, one of the nation's few nursing centers established within a medical school.
______________________________________ NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
Number of nursing employees: Approximately 5,000
______________________________________ North Shore-LIJ Health System
Location: Headquarters in Great Neck, NY

Number of nursing employees: Varies by facility (approximately 46,000 total employees)

About the company: The North Shore-LIJ Health System was established in 1997 with the integration of the North Shore Health System and Long Island Jewish Medical Center. Today, it's the largest health care system in New York in terms of patient revenue. It includes 16 hospitals throughout Long Island and New York City, as well as three skilled nursing facilities and nearly 400 ambulatory and physician practices. The network has nursing school affiliations with 15 colleges and universities.
______________________________________ Orlando Health
Number of nursing employees: Varies by facility (approximately 14,000 total employees)

About the company: This private, not-for-profit hospital network provides health care and medical services for 1.6 million central Florida residents and thousands of visitors annually. Its main campus consists of the Orlando Regional Medical Center, Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies, and MD Anderson Cancer Center Orlando.
______________________________________ Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center
Location: Baton Rouge, LA

Number of nursing employees: Approximately 1,000

About the company: A Catholic teaching hospital established 90 years ago, OLOL is one of the largest privately owned hospitals in Louisiana, as well as the largest of four hospitals in the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System. Today, it serves 11 parishes and has 700 licensed beds.
______________________________________ University of Michigan Health System
Location: Headquarters in Ann Arbor, MI

Number of nursing employees: Approximately 4,700
______________________________________ University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Location: Headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA

Number of nursing employees: Varies by facility (approximately 54,000 total employees)

About the company: UPMC is a network of more than 20 hospitals and 400 outpatient facilities affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences. With more than 50,000 total employees and $10 billion in operating revenue, it's one of the largest employers in Pennsylvania. In addition to offering medical care, UPMC covers 2.2 million members through its Insurance Services Division.
______________________________________ US Department of Veterans Affairs
Location: Headquarters in Washington, DC, with facilities throughout the United States

Number of nursing employees: Varies by facility (approximately 278,000 total employees)

About the company: The US Department of Veterans Affairs was established in 1930, consolidating several agencies that provided services to veterans of American conflicts. Today, the Veterans Health Administration, the wing of the VA focused on health care, operates 171 medical centers as well as dozens of outpatient clinics, nursing homes, and other facilities.
______________________________________ Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Number of nursing employees: Varies by facility (approximately 14,000 total employees)

About the company: This organization contains several hospitals and clinics, as well as Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine and School of Nursing. Vanderbilt has been well-ranked in the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals surveys, and Vanderbilt University was once named one of Forbes' "100 Best Companies to Work For" (more than 80% of Vanderbilt's employees work at the Medical Center). In 2013, VUMC sought to offset losses in government and insurance reimbursements with a hiring freeze, which resulted in the loss of 700 positions, as well as an additional 1,000 layoffs-affecting all areas of operations-by the end of the year. Still, at press time, there were several full- and part-time open nursing positions advertised on the hospital's website.

Contact: Job listings are available at vanderbilt.edu/work-at-vanderbilt
______________________________________ Vidant Health
Location: Headquarters in Greenville, NC

Number of nursing employees: Varies by facility (approximately 9,300 total employees)

About the company: Vidant Health (formerly University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina) is a nonprofit system of nine hospitals and other facilities located throughout eastern North Carolina. It's one of the state's largest employers, and it serves more than 1.4 million people.
______________________________________ Visiting Nurse Service of New York
Location: New York Metropolitan Area

Number of nursing employees: Approximately 2,500

About the company: Lillian Wald started the Visiting Nurse Service of New York in 1893 in Manhattan's impoverished Lower East Side neighborhood. Today, the organization she founded is the largest not-for-profit home health care agency in the country. The VSNY operates and has offices in all five boroughs of New York City, as well as nearby Westchester, Suffolk, and Nassau counties.
______________________________________ Walgreens Healthcare Clinic
Location: Locations throughout the country

Number of nursing employees: Varies by location

About the company: Walgreens Healthcare Clinic (formerly Take Care Health Services) is a convenient care clinic-a rapidly expanding job market-which operates inside Walgreens stores around the country. Clinics provide preventative care, including physical exams, vaccines, and health screenings.

Related Articles

The Minority Nurse Best Companies Survey

Want to know how your organization compares to others in the field? Take the Minority Nurse magazine 'Best Companies' survey and find out! This survey is confidential and will only take a few minutes to complete. Minority Nurse will also be giving away five $50 Amazon gift cards to a...

Minority Children's Health Gets Poor Report Card

In the year 2000, 86% of Caucasian children in the U.S. were reported by their parents to be in excellent or very good health, compared to only 75% of Hispanic children and 74% of African-American children. In addition, about 70% of youngsters from families living below the poverty line...

2015 Nursing Salary Survey

Want to know how your salary compares to others in the field? Take the Minority Nurse salary survey to find out. This short, confidential online survey should take no more than five minutes. To participate, please follow this link or copy and paste the URL into your browser: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XNV5DM7 Upon...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 25 Nursing Employers - Minority Nurse

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What makes a company one of the "best" places to work is, of course, highly subjective. For some, a top-notch workplace is all about friendly coworkers and flexible hours; for others, salary and benefits are all that matter. For Minority Nurse's Best Companies survey, we asked readers to tell us what was most important to ...

# data[].attributes.body
A child receiving a tuberculosis vaccine at school in Bulacan province, Philippines, 1952.

# data[].attributes.body
-- origins of nursing predate the mid-19th century.
-- professional nursing traditionally begins with Florence Nightingale.
--  The nursing of strangers, either in hospitals or in their homes was not seen as a respectable career for ladies.
-- Ladies who wished to nurse, were expected to do so only for sick family members and friends.
-- Nightingale believed that well-educated women, using scientific principles and informed education about healthy lifestyles, could improve the care of sick patients. She was very well-educated herself.
-- In 1854 Nightingale had the opportunity to test her beliefs during Britian's Crimean War. During this time newspaper stories reported that sick and wounded Russian soldiers nursed by religious orders felt way better than British soldiers inflamed.
-- With having women as nurses and in the career, they cared for soldiers in a more in-depth way than anyone thought they would.
-- After this she was asked to take a few of her nurses to the military hospital because of how good their work was.
-- Nightingale believed in the education of nurses.
-- For centuries, most nurses had taken place at home and were responsible for families, friends, and respected community members. During epidemics, such as cholera, typhus, and smallpox, men took on active nursing roles. For example, Stephen Girard, a wealthy French-born banker, won the hearts of citizens of his adopted city of Philadelphia for his courageous and compassionate nursing of the victims of the 1793 yellow fever epidemic.
-- Everyone began to realize the importance of nurses.
-- Later on hospitals began making training schools for nurses.
-- Nurses transformed hospitals. In addition to the compassionate care they give to patients, they established an orderly, routine, and systematized enviornment which patients healed. They administered increasingly complicated treatments and medication regimes, which have become more and more advanced.

--- "By the mid-1930s the increasing technological and clinical demands of patient care, the escalating needs of patients for intensive nursing, and the resulting movement of such care out of homes and into hospitals demanded hospital staffs of trained rather than student nurses. By the mid-1950s hospitals were the largest single employer of registered nurses."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
nursing, profession that assumes responsibility for the continuous care of the sick, the injured, the disabled, and the dying. Nursing is also responsible for encouraging the health of individuals, families, and communities in medical and community settings. Nurses are actively involved in health care research, management, policy deliberations, and patient advocacy. Nurses with postbaccalaureate preparation assume independent responsibility for providing primary health care and specialty services to individuals, families, and communities.

Professional nurses work both independently and in collaboration with other health care professionals such as physicians. Professional nurses supervise the work of nurses who have limited licenses, such as licensed practical nurses (LPNs) in the United States and enrolled nurses (ENs) in Australia. Professional nurses also oversee the work of nursing assistants in various settings.

Nursing is the largest, the most diverse, and one of the most respected of all the health care professions. There are more than 2.9 million registered nurses in the United States alone, and many more millions worldwide. While true demographic representation remains an elusive goal, nursing does have a higher proportional representation of racial and ethnic minorities than other health care professions. In some countries, however, men still remain significantly underrepresented.

The demand for nursing remains high, and projections suggest that such demand will substantively increase. Advances in health care technology, rising expectations of people seeking care, and reorganization of health care systems require a greater number of highly educated professionals. Demographic changes, such as large aging populations in many countries of the world, also fuel this demand.

History of nursing

Although the origins of nursing predate the mid-19th century, the history of professional nursing traditionally begins with Florence Nightingale. Nightingale, the well-educated daughter of wealthy British parents, defied social conventions and decided to become a nurse. The nursing of strangers, either in hospitals or in their homes, was not then seen as a respectable career for well-bred ladies, who, if they wished to nurse, were expected to do so only for sick family and intimate friends. In a radical departure from these views, Nightingale believed that well-educated women, using scientific principles and informed education about healthy lifestyles, could dramatically improve the care of sick patients. Moreover, she believed that nursing provided an ideal independent calling full of intellectual and social freedom for women, who at that time had few other career options.

In 1854 Nightingale had the opportunity to test her beliefs during Britain's Crimean War. Newspaper stories reporting that sick and wounded Russian soldiers nursed by religious orders fared much better than British soldiers inflamed public opinion. In response, the British government asked Nightingale to take a small group of nurses to the military hospital at Scutari (modern-day Üsküdar, Turk.). Within days of their arrival, Nightingale and her nurses had reorganized the barracks hospital in accordance with 19th-century science: walls were scrubbed for sanitation, windows opened for ventilation, nourishing food prepared and served, and medications and treatments efficiently administered. Within weeks death rates plummeted, and soldiers were no longer sickened by infectious diseases arising from poor sanitary conditions. Within months a grateful public knew of the work of the "Lady with the Lamp," who made nightly rounds comforting the sick and wounded. By the end of the 19th century, the entire Western world shared Nightingale's belief in the worth of educated nurses.

Nightingale's achievements overshadowed other ways to nurse the sick. For centuries, most nursing of the sick had taken place at home and had been the responsibility of families, friends, and respected community members with reputations as effective healers. During epidemics, such as cholera, typhus, and smallpox, men took on active nursing roles. For example, Stephen Girard, a wealthy French-born banker, won the hearts of citizens of his adopted city of Philadelphia for his courageous and compassionate nursing of the victims of the 1793 yellow fever epidemic.

As urbanization and industrialization spread, those without families to care for them found themselves in hospitals where the quality of nursing care varied enormously. Some patients received excellent care. Women from religious nursing orders were particularly known for the quality of the nursing care they provided in the hospitals they established. Other hospitals depended on recovering patients or hired men and women for the nursing care of patients. Sometimes this care was excellent; other times it was deplorable, and the unreliability of hospital-based nursing care became a particular problem by the late 19th century, when changes in medical practices and treatments required competent nurses. The convergence of hospitals' needs, physicians' wishes, and women's desire for meaningful work led to a new health care professional: the trained nurse.

Hospitals established their own training schools for nurses. In exchange for lectures and clinical instructions, students provided the hospital with two or three years of skilled free nursing care. This hospital-based educational model had significant long-term implications. It bound the education of nurses to hospitals rather than colleges, a tie that was not definitively broken until the latter half of the 20th century. The hospital-based training model also reinforced segregation in society and in the health care system. For instance, African American student nurses were barred from almost all American hospitals and training schools. They could seek training only in schools established by African American hospitals. Most of all, the hospital-based training model strengthened the cultural stereotyping of nursing as women's work. Only a few hospitals provided training to maintain men's traditional roles within nursing.

Still, nurses transformed hospitals. In addition to the skilled, compassionate care they gave to patients, they established an orderly, routine, and systemized environment within which patients healed. They administered increasingly complicated treatments and medication regimes. They maintained the aseptic and infection-control protocols that allowed more complex and invasive surgeries to proceed. In addition, they experimented with different models of nursing interventions that humanized increasingly technical and impersonal medical procedures.

Outside hospitals, trained nurses quickly became critical in the fight against infectious diseases. In the early 20th century, the newly discovered " germ theory" of disease (the knowledge that many illnesses were caused by bacteria) caused considerable alarm in countries around the world. Teaching methods of preventing the spread of diseases, such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, and influenza, became the domain of the visiting nurses in the United States and the district nurses in the United Kingdom and Europe. These nurses cared for infected patients in the patients' homes and taught families and communities the measures necessary to prevent spreading the infection. They were particularly committed to working with poor and immigrant communities, which often had little access to other health care services. The work of these nurses contributed to a dramatic decline in the mortality and morbidity rates from infectious diseases for children and adults.

At the same time, independent contractors called private-duty nurses cared for sick individuals in their homes. These nurses performed important clinical work and supported families who had the financial resources to afford care, but the unregulated health care labour market left them vulnerable to competition from both untrained nurses and each year's class of newly graduated trained nurses. Very soon, the supply of private-duty nurses was greater than the demand from families. At the turn of the 20th century, nurses in industrialized countries began to establish professional associations to set standards that differentiated the work of trained nurses from both assistive-nursing personnel and untrained nurses. More important, they successfully sought licensing protection for the practice of registered nursing. Later on, nurses in some countries turned to collective bargaining and labour organizations to assist them in asserting their and their patients' rights to improve conditions and make quality nursing care possible.

By the mid-1930s the increasing technological and clinical demands of patient care, the escalating needs of patients for intensive nursing, and the resulting movement of such care out of homes and into hospitals demanded hospital staffs of trained rather than student nurses. By the mid-1950s hospitals were the largest single employer of registered nurses. This trend continues, although as changes in health care systems have reemphasized care at home, a proportionately greater number of nurses work in outpatient clinics, home care, public health, and other community-based health care organizations.

Other important changes in nursing occurred during the latter half of the 20th century. The profession grew more diverse. For example, in the United States, the National Organization of Coloured Graduate Nurses (NOCGN) capitalized on the acute shortage of nurses during World War II and successfully pushed for the desegregation of both the military nursing corps and the nursing associations. The American Nurses Association (ANA) desegregated in 1949, one of the first national professional associations to do so. As a result, in 1951, feeling its goals fulfilled, the NOCGN dissolved. But by the late 1960s some African American nurses felt that the ANA had neither the time nor the resources to adequately address all their concerns. The National Black Nurses Association (NBNA) formed in 1971 as a parallel organization to the ANA.

Nursing's educational structure also changed. Dependence on hospital-based training schools declined, and those schools were replaced with collegiate programs either in community or technical colleges or in universities. In addition, more systematic and widespread programs of graduate education began to emerge. These programs prepare nurses not only for roles in management and education but also for roles as clinical specialists and nurse practitioners. Nurses no longer had to seek doctoral degrees in fields other than nursing. By the 1970s nurses were establishing their own doctoral programs, emphasizing the nursing knowledge and science and research needed to address pressing nursing care and care-delivery issues.

During the second half of the 20th century, nurses responded to rising numbers of sick patients with innovative reorganizations of their patterns of care. For example, critical care units in hospitals began when nurses started grouping their most critically ill patients together to provide more effective use of modern technology. In addition, experiments with models of progressive patient care and primary nursing reemphasized the responsibility of one nurse for one patient in spite of the often-overwhelming bureaucratic demands by hospitals on nurses' time.

The nursing profession also has been strengthened by its increasing emphasis on national and international work in developing countries and by its advocacy of healthy and safe environments. The international scope of nursing is supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), which recognizes nursing as the backbone of most health care systems around the world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Nursing | History, Education, & Practices

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nursing, profession that assumes responsibility for the continuous care of the sick, the injured, the disabled, and the dying.