Twixt candle and lamp: the contribution of Elizabeth Fry and the Institution of Nursing Sisters to Nursing Reform

Abstract

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Drawing professional boundries : professional organizations, communication and interprofessional collaboration in health care

“…In the first half of the 19th century, rapid urbanization in England brought about a significant increase in the number of hospitals and the number of patients in those hospitals (Huntsman et al, 2002). This, along with the increasing complexity o f medicine noted above, increased demand for qualified nurses.…”

“…Their work continued with the establishment o f a hospital to train deaconesses -what many consider to be the first nursing school in the western world. Later, Florence Nightingale would train at the Institute(Huntsman et al, 2002). 22Katherine W illiams (1980) writes that instruction from physicians came only to the head nurse: "She receives the directions o f the physician or surgeon to whose ward she is attached and she reports to the Fry and the Institute o f Nursing Sisters (and, by extension, o f the Fliedners and their Deaconess Institute) made a number of significant contributions to the evolution of nursing as a profession.…”

“…Huntsman et al (2002) similarly report that an 1877 editorial in The Lancet declared that nurses "possess just enough knowledge to make them dangerous" (p. 356).…”