This paper examines the history of maternity nursing and how this has been impacted by the modernization of nursing in the past century.
The history of maternity nursing in many ways echoes that of other types of nursing, although it is arguable that improvements in the quality of nursing care have had an even greater impact that improvements in other arenas of health-care. This paper examines changes and improvements in maternity nursing since the beginning of modern nursing during the last century.
“Florence Nightingale helped to revolutionize the practice ” and profession ” of nursing in the middle of the 19th century when she established a series of training schools for nurses that instructed nurses in a range of skills, including basic hygiene, as Dossey (1999) describes. While many of the problems in 19th century hospitals certainly were based in the limited medical technology and knowledge that were available at the time, many of the problems resulted from sloppy practices.”