NursingNursingis a profession within the health care sector focused on the care ofindividuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, orrecover optimal health and quality of life. They also take on vital roles ofeducation, assessing situations, as support.[1] Nurses may bedifferentiated from other health care providers by their approach to patientcare, training, and scope of practice. Nurses practice in many specialtieswith differing levels of prescription authority. Nurses comprise the largestcomponent of most healthcare environments;[2][3] but there is evidence ofinternational shortages of qualified nurses.[4] Many nurses provide carewithin the ordering scope of physicians, and this traditional role has shapedthe public image of nurses as care providers. Nurse practitioners arenurses with a graduate degree in advanced practice nursing. They arehowever permitted by most jurisdictions to practice independently in avariety of settings. Since the postwar period, nurse education hasundergone a process of diversification towards advanced and specializedcredentials, and many of the traditional regulations and provider roles arechanging.[5][6]Nurses develop a plan of care, working collaboratively with physicians,therapists, the patient, the patient's family, and other team members thatfocuses on treating illness to improve quality of life. In the United Kingdomand the United States, clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners,diagnose health problems and prescribe the correct medications and othertherapies, depending on particular state regulations.[7] Nurses may helpcoordinate the patient care performed by other members of amultidisciplinary health care team such as therapists, medical practitioners,and dietitians. Nurses provide care both interdependently, for example, withphysicians, and independently as nursing professionals. In addition toproviding care and support, nurses educate the public, and promote healthand wellness.[8] HistoryTraditionalNursing historians face the challenge of determining whether care providedto the sick or injured in antiquity is called nursing care.[9] In the fifth centuryBC, for example, the Hippocratic Collection in places describes skilled careand observation of patients by male "attendants," who may have been earlynurses.[10] Around 600 BC in India, it is recorded in Sushruta Samhita,Book 3, Chapter V about the role of the nurse as "the different parts ormembers of the body as mentioned before including the skin, cannot becorrectly described by one who is not well versed in anatomy. Hence, anyone desirous of acquiring a thorough knowledge of anatomy shouldprepare a dead body and carefully, observe, by dissecting it, and examineits different parts."Before the foundation of modern nursing, members of religious orders suchas nuns and monks often provided nursing-like care.[11] Examples exist inChristian,[12] Islamic[13] and Buddhist[14] traditions amongst others.Phoebe, mentioned in Romans 16 has been described in many sources as"the first visiting nurse".[15][16] These traditions were influential in thedevelopment of the ethos of modern nursing. The religious roots of modernnursing remain in evidence today in many countries. One example in theUnited Kingdom is the use of the historical title "sister" to refer to a seniornurse in the past.[17]During the Reformation of the 16th century, Protestant reformers shut downthe monasteries and convents, allowing a few hundred municipal hospicesto remain in operation in northern Europe. Those nuns who had beenserving as nurses were given pensions or told to get married and stayhome.[18] Nursing care went to the inexperienced as traditional caretakers,rooted in the Roman Catholic Church, were removed from their positions.The nursing profession suffered a major setback for approximately 200years.[19]19th centuryDuring the Crimean War the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna issued thecall for women to join the Order of Exaltation of the Cross(Krestodvizhenskaya obshchina) for the year of service in the militaryhospitals. The first section of twenty-eight "sisters", headed by AleksandraPetrovna Stakhovich, the Directress of the Order, went off to the Crimeaearly in November 1854.[20]Florence Nightingale laid the foundations of professional nursing after theCrimean War.[22] Nightingale believed that nursing was a social freedomand mission for women. She believed that any educated woman can helpimprove the care of the medically sick.[23] Her Notes on Nursing (1859)became popular. The Nightingale model of professional education, havingset up one of the first school of nursing that is connected to a continuouslyoperating hospital and medical school, spread widely in Europe and NorthAmerica after 1870.[24] Nightingale was also a pioneer of the graphicalpresentation of statistical data.[25]Florence Nightingale worked by sub concepts of the environmental theory.She included five factors that helped nurses in her time of working in poorsanitation and with uneducated nurses. These factors included (1) fresh air,(2) clean water, (3) a working drainage system, (4) cleanliness, and (5)good light or sunlight. Nightingale believed that a clean, workingenvironment were important in caring for patients. In the 19th century, thistheory was ideal and used to help patients all around, even if some factorswere hard to get. Nightingale made this theory with the ability to be altered.This theory was made to change the environment around the patient for thebetter of their health.Nightingale's recommendations built upon the successes of Jamaican"doctresses" such as Mary Seacole, who like Nightingale, served in theCrimean War. Seacole practised hygiene and the use of herbs in healingwounded soldiers and those suffering from diseases in the 19th century inthe Crimea, Central America, and Jamaica. Her predecessors had greatsuccess as healers in the Colony of Jamaica in the 18th century, and theyincluded Seacole's mother, Mrs. Grant, Sarah Adams, Cubah Cornwallis,and Grace Donne, the mistress and doctress to Jamaica's wealthiestplanter, Simon Taylor.[27]Other important nurses in the