International Nursing day: 9 Interesting Facts About Nursing You Didn’t Know

It’s International Nurses Day, celebrated each year on the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth on May 12, 1820. Did you know that what we now refer to as nursing today started in the early days was primarily a family affair with mothers caring for their own families or neighbours. But in 1880, the status of Nursing was greatly improved and many women including religious orders were now involved in patient care. There are a lot about nursing locally and internationally you probably didn’t know and INFORMATION NIGERIA has put together 9 nursing facts…

-Modern Scientific Nursing started with the crusading efforts of Miss Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) during and after the Crimean¬ War (1854-1856). She combined Christian ideals, strict discipline and a sense of mission to open the door for what is known today as the nursing profession.

-Nursing was the first profession in the health industry to form an international organisation – the International Council of Nurses formed in 1899.

-The first known nurse is said to have been Phoebe, a deaconess sent to Rome by St Paul in the first century and mentioned in Romans 16:1.

– The word ‘nurse’ was originally ‘nourice’, one who nourishes.

-‘Nurse’ was first used for a woman who nourished a child, later known as a wet-nurse.

– Nursing came to Nigeria through the British Colonial masters. They provided services and medical care for wounded soldiers at the furtherworth Hospital. Later the first nursing home in Nigeria in Jericho, Ibadan by the government of the British Colonial masters.

-Later on missionaries and their wives came to supplement government effort by setting up Mission homes, Dispensaries e.t.c. and commence the training of Nurses in Nigeria, though language barrier there was no formal training but on the Job acquisition skills and practical aspect are been rendered by nursing surger.

-Before 1981, nursing was adjudged a vocation in Nigeria, but by virtue of the Industrial Arbitration Panel (IAP) award of 1981, nursing got the recognition of a full-fledged profession.

-Being International Nurses day, we remember a brave nurse like Justina Obi Ejelonu who contracted and died of ebola, after attending to late Liberian Patrick Sawyer while he was ill at the First Consultant hospital in Lagos

Thank you nurses for your work towards humanity!!!