How did skilled nursing practice develop to become an essential part of the modern health system? This book provides some important answers to this question. It traces the history and development of nursing practice in Europe and North America, exploring two broad categories of nursing work: the ‘hands-on’ clinical work of nurses in hospitals and the work of nurses in public health, which involved health screening, health education and public health crisis management. The book contains rich case studies of nursing practice across diverse settings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As well as examining ‘what nurses did’, it explores the significance and meaning of nursing work, for nurses themselves, their patients and their communities, and examines developments in practice against a backdrop of social, cultural, political and economic drivers and constraints.

This book will be of interest to academics and clinical nurses alike. It is also an ideal textbook for undergraduate nursing programmes, providing students with rich accounts of the history of their own disciplinary practice.