Nursing Care Models Paper

Most people would agree that research in nursing began with Florence Nightingale in the 1850s. Her most well-known research contribution involved an analysis of factors affecting soldier mortality and morbidity during the Crimean War. Based on skillful analyses, she was successful in effecting changes in nursing care and, more generally, in public health. After Nightingale’s work, research was absent from the nursing literature until the early 1900s, but most early studies concerned nurses’ education rather than clinical issues.

In the 1950s, research by nurses began to accelerate. For example, a nursing research center was established at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Also, the American Nurses Foundation, which is devoted to the promotion of nursing research, was founded. The surge in the number of studies conducted in the 1950s created the need for a new journal; Nursing Research came into being in 1952. As shown in Table 1.1 , dissemination opportunities in professional journals grew steadily thereafter.

In the 1960s, nursing leaders expressed concern about the shortage of research on practice issues. Professional nursing organizations, such as the Western Interstate Council for Higher Education in Nursing, established research priorities, and practice-oriented research on various clinical topics began to emerge in the literature.