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A nurse's cap or nursing cap is part of the female nurse's uniform, introduced early in the history of the profession. The cap's original purpose was to keep the nurse's hair neatly in place and present a modest appearance. Male nurses do not wear caps.
In some schools, a capping ceremony presents new nursing students their caps before beginning their clinical (hospital) training.
The nurse's cap originated from a group of women in the early Christian era, called "deaconesses." These women were distinguished from other women during this time by white coverings worn on their heads. This particular head covering was worn to show that this group of women worked in the service of caring for the sick. Originally, this head covering was more of a veil, but it later evolved into a white cap during the Victorian era. It was during this era that women were required to keep their heads covered. The cap worn was hood-shaped with a ruffle around the face and tied under the chin, similar to cleaning ladies of that day. Long hair was fashionable during the Victorian era, so the cap kept the nurse's hair up and out of her face, as well as keeping it from becoming soiled. [1]
The nurse's cap was derived from the nun's habit and developed over time into two types:
The nursing cap was originally used by Florence Nightingale in the 1800s. [2]
Different styles of caps were used to depict the seniority of the nurse, the frillier and longer the more senior the nurse.
The nursing cap is a nearly universally recognized symbol of nursing. It allows patients to quickly identify a nurse in the hospital from other members of the health team. [3] Additionally, some designs of caps serve the same function as hair nets.
Some claim the cap is a potential carrier of bacteria and other disease-causing pathogens that could then be transmitted from patient to patient. [4] However, such incidents can be prevented when infection control procedures are followed.
Around 1874, the Bellevue Hospital School of Nursing in New York City adopted a special nursing cap as a way to identify nurses who had graduated from Bellevue. The Bellevue cap covered the entire head except the ears, and can be compared to a current ski hat, although it was made out of white linen and had fringe around the bottom (put simply, it resembled an upside-down cupcake wrapper, with a fringe around the bottom of the opening). As the number of nursing schools increased, so did the need for unique caps. Each nursing school decided to design their own style of nurse's cap. Some became very elaborate and some were even different shapes. Because each school had their own cap, it became very easy to determine from which school the nurse had graduated. [1] It was common for a black stripe (usually a black velvet ribbon) on the cap to signify a Registered Nurse. In some regions, two thinner stripes were used to signify the award of a Bachelor's of Science in nursing (BSN). The caps needed to be washed regularly and the black stripe(s) needed to be easy to remove and reattach. Water-soluble lubricants such as KY jelly become solid when dried and were plentiful in hospitals. Nurses often used a thin layer of these lubricants applied to the back of the ribbon to attach stripes to their caps.
In a global perspective, the nurses' cap continues to be widely used. However, the use of the nurses' cap had begun to slowly decline in Western Europe and Northern America by the late 1960s. The use of nurses' caps in the medical facilities of the United States all but disappeared by the late 1970s with the near universal adoption of scrubs.[ citation needed ]
In areas where healthcare facilities no longer required their nurses to wear nurse's caps, nursing schools eliminated the cap as a mandatory part of the students' uniform. In addition, with the growth of technology in the health-care setting, some felt that the nurse's caps were an obstacle for nurses wearing them, while others disagreed. [1] With the rapid growth of the number of men in nursing, some also felt a need for a unisex uniform, while others saw no difficulty with gender specific uniforms as is the case in many uniformed professions. However, nurses' caps can still be found in many developing and developed nations. Japan and South Korea are examples of developed countries with near universal use of the nurses' cap. It is also common for students of nursing to have their graduation portraits taken while wearing nurses' caps.[ citation needed ]
In countries where the nursing cap is no longer required as a part of a nurse's uniform, it still holds the same significance that it did during the time of Florence Nightingale. The nursing cap symbolizes the goal of the nurse, which is to provide "service to those in need." Furthermore, the cap is a sign of the industry's ageless values of dedication, honesty, wisdom, and faith. [1]
A nurse uniform is attire worn by nurses for hygiene and identification. The traditional nurse uniform consists of a dress, apron and cap. It has existed in many variants, but the basic style has remained recognizable.
Hospital volunteers, also known as candy stripers in the United States, work without regular pay in a variety of health care settings, usually under the direct supervision of nurses.
A headscarf is a scarf covering most or all of the top of a person's, usually women's, hair and head, leaving the face uncovered. A headscarf is formed of a triangular cloth or a square cloth folded into a triangle, with which the head is covered.
Nurse education consists of the theoretical and practical training provided to nurses with the purpose to prepare them for their duties as nursing care professionals. This education is provided to student nurses by experienced nurses and other medical professionals who have qualified or experienced for educational tasks, traditionally in a type of professional school known as a nursing school of college of nursing. Most countries offer nurse education courses that can be relevant to general nursing or to specialized areas including mental health nursing, pediatric nursing, and post-operative nursing. Nurse education also provides post-qualification courses in specialist subjects within nursing.
A licensed practical nurse (LPN), in much of the United States and Canada, is a nurse who cares for people who are sick, injured, convalescent, or disabled. In the United States, LPNs work under the direction of physicians, mid-level practitioners, and may work under the direction of registered nurses depending on their jurisdiction.
The Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care is an academic faculty within King's College London. The faculty is the world's first nursing school to be continuously connected to a fully serving hospital and medical school. Established on 9 July 1860 by Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, it was a model for many similar training schools through the UK, Commonwealth and other countries for the latter half of the 19th century. It is primarily concerned with the education of people to become nurses and midwives. It also carries out nursing research, continuing professional development and postgraduate programmes. The Faculty forms part of the Waterloo campus on the South Bank of the River Thames and is now one of the largest faculties in the university.
Matron is the job title of a very senior or the chief nurse in several countries, including the United Kingdom, and other Commonwealth countries and former colonies.
The United States (U.S.) Cadet Nurse Corps (CNC) for women was authorized by the U.S. Congress on 15 June 1943 and signed into law by president Franklin D. Roosevelt on 1 July. The purpose of the law was to alleviate the nursing shortage that existed before and during World War II. The legislative act contained a specific provision that prohibited discrimination based upon race, color, or creed. The United States Public Health Service (USPHS) was named the supervisory agency; it was answerable to Thomas Parran, Jr. the surgeon general of the United States. The USPHS established a separate division to administer the CNC program and Parran appointed Lucile Petry a registered nurse (RN) as its director.
A nursing pin is a type of badge, usually made of metal such as gold or silver, which is worn by nurses to identify the nursing school from which they graduated. They are traditionally presented to the newly graduated nurses by the faculty at a pinning ceremony as a symbolic welcome into the profession. Most pins have a symbolic meaning, often representing the history of the nursing program for that school of nursing.
A pinning ceremony is a symbolic welcoming of newly graduated or soon-to-be graduated nurses into the nursing profession.
Nursing in Australia has evolved in training and regulation since the 19th century.
Harlem Hospital School of Nursing was a training school for African-American women, which was established at Harlem Hospital in Harlem, New York City in 1923. It was founded due to the lack of nursing schools in New York that accepted African American women. Until 1923, the Lincoln Hospital School for Nurses in The Bronx was the only school that allowed the enrollment of Black women.
Linda Richards was the first professionally trained American nurse. She established nursing training programs in the United States and Japan, and created the first system for keeping individual medical records for hospitalized patients.
The word "nurse" originally came from the Latin word "nutrire", meaning to suckle, referring to a wet-nurse; only in the late 16th century did it attain its modern meaning of a person who cares for the infirm.
Nursing is a profession within the healthcare sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life. Nurses can be differentiated from other healthcare providers by their approach to patient care, training, and scope of practice. Nurses practice in many specialties with differing levels of prescription authority. Nurses comprise the largest component of most healthcare environments; but there is evidence of international shortages of qualified nurses. Nurses collaborate with other healthcare providers such as physicians, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, and psychologists. There is a distinction between nurses and nurse practitioners; in the U.S., the latter are nurses with a graduate degree in advanced practice nursing, and are permitted to prescribe medications unlike the former. They practice independently in a variety of settings in more than half of the United States. Since the postwar period, nurse education has undergone a process of diversification towards advanced and specialized credentials, and many of the traditional regulations and provider roles are changing.
Scrubs, or sometimes Surgical Scrubs, or Nursing Scrubs, are the sanitary clothing worn by physicians, nurses, dentists and other workers involved in patient care. Originally designed for use by surgeons and other operating room personnel, who would put them on when sterilizing themselves, or "scrubbing in", before surgery, they are now worn by many hospital personnel.
The Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing (HBSON) is the nursing school of Hunter College, a public university that is a constituent organization of the City University of New York (CUNY). It is located on the Brookdale Campus, at East 25th Street and 1st Avenue in Kips Bay, near Bellevue Hospital. The school is the flagship nursing program for CUNY.
The history of nursing in the United Kingdom relates to the development of the profession since the 1850s. The history of nursing itself dates back to ancient history, when the sick were cared for in temples and places of worship. In the early Christian era, nursing in the United Kingdom was undertaken by certain women in the Christian Church, their services being extended to patients in their homes. These women had no real training by today's standards, but experience taught them valuable skills, especially in the use of herbs and folk drugs, and some gained fame as the physicians of their era. Remnants of the religious nature of nurses remains in Britain today, especially with the retention of the job title "Sister" for a senior female nurse.
The history of nursing in the United States focuses on the professionalization of Nursing in the United States since the Civil War.
Historically, women have made up a large majority of the profession and academic discipline of nursing. Women's nursing roles include both caring for patients and making sure that the wards and equipment are clean. In the United States, women make up the majority of the field of nursing, comprising 86% of Registered Nurses (RNs) in 2021; globally, women comprise 89% of the nursing workforce.