A registered nurse (RN) is a nurse who has graduated or successfully passed a nursing program from a recognized nursing school and met the requirements outlined by a country, state, province or similar government-authorized licensing body to obtain a nursing license. An RN's scope of practice is determined by legislation, and is regulated by a professional body or council.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is the regulator for nursing and midwifery professions in the UK. The NMC maintains a register of all nurses, midwives and specialist community public health nurses and nursing associates eligible to practise within the UK. It sets and reviews standards for their education, training, conduct and performance. The NMC also investigates allegations of impaired fitness to practise.
The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), formerly the Health Professions Council (HPC), is a statutory regulator of over 280,000 professionals from 15 health and care professions in the United Kingdom. The Council reports its main purpose is to protect the public. It does this by setting and maintaining standards of proficiency and conduct for the professions it regulates. Its key functions include approving education and training programmes which health and care professionals must complete before they can register with the HCPC; and maintaining and publishing a Register of health and care providers who meet pre-determined professional requirements and standards of practice.
Nursing in the United Kingdom has a long history. The current form of nursing is often considered as beginning with Florence Nightingale who pioneered modern nursing. Nightingale initiated formal schools of nursing in the United Kingdom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The role and perception of nursing has dramatically changed from that of a handmaiden to the doctor to professionals in their own right. There are over 500,000 nurses in the United Kingdom and they work in a variety of settings, such as hospitals, health centres, nursing homes, hospices, communities, and academia, with most working for the National Health Service (NHS). Nurses work across all demographics and requirements of the public: adults, children, mental health, and learning disability. Nurses work in a range of specialties from the broad areas of medicine, surgery, theatres, and investigative sciences such as imaging. Nurses also work in large areas of sub-specialities such as respiratory, diabetes, neurology, infectious diseases, liver, research, cardiac, and stoma. Nurses often work in multi-disciplinary teams but increasingly are found working independently.
The Frontier Nursing Service was founded in 1925 by Mary Breckinridge and provides healthcare services to rural, underserved populations and educates nurse-midwives.
Nursing in Australia has evolved in training and regulation since the 19th century.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation is the largest Irish professional union for nurses and midwives with 35,000 members. It was founded in 1919 after World War I, when a group of Irish nurses and midwives had a meeting in Dublin to discuss the issues in promoting an improvement in wages and advocating for a standard to be set for the conduction of their duties in the medical profession. This new organisation focused on increasing awareness towards tackling problems of pay and pension. They encouraged participation in recognising these changes by recruiting new members and establishing a standard for nursing and midwifery practice through educational initiatives. They were originally known as the ‘Irish Nurses Union’. In the 1930s, they began to promote their campaigns internationally by becoming affiliated with the International Council of Nurses. To this day they are still active and are based at the Whitworth Building in North Brunswick, Dublin.
Indian Nursing Council is a national regulatory body for nurses and nurse education in India. It is an autonomous body under the Government of India, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, constituted by the Central Government under section 3(1) of the Indian Nursing Council Act, 1947 of Indian parliament. According to the original act the function of the council is to provide "uniformity in nursing education".
Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life. Nurses may be differentiated from other health care 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. Unlike nurse practitioners, nurses typically cannot prescribe medications in the US. Nurse practitioners are nurses with a graduate degree in advanced practice nursing. 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.
Nursing is self-regulated in Ireland. The regulatory body is An Bord Altranais. The board was established under the 1950 Nurses Act and currently operates under the 1985 Nurses Act. There are currently over 82,000 nurses registered by An Bord Altranais of which over 65,000 are on the active register ABA Statistics 2006.
Health professional requisites refer to the regulations used by countries to control the quality of health workers practicing in their jurisdictions and to control the size of the health labour market. They include licensure, certification and proof of minimum training for regulated health professions.
Nursing in Kenya began in 1908 and was conducted without a formal framework until 1950. Over the decades, with demand for healthcare providers increasing due to marked growth in the population of Kenya, training programs were implemented.
The Cape Coast Nursing and Midwifery Training College is a public tertiary health institution in the Cape Coast in the Central Region of Ghana. The college is in the Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly. The activities of the institution is supervised by the Ministry of Health. The University of Ghana awards a Diploma in Nursing after students from the institution have successfully completed a three-year nursing training programme. The institution is accredited by the National Accreditation Board. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (N&MC) regulates the activities, curriculum and examination of the student nurses and midwives. The council's mandate is derived from the Health Professions Regulatory Bodies Act, 2013.
The Nursing and Midwifery Training College, Korle Bu, the premier institution in Ghana for nursing education, is located in Korle Bu in Greater Accra. The establishment of the college in 1945 was supervised by Agnes Yewande Savage, West Africa's first woman doctor. The college is a public health training institution, and it is supervised by the Ministry of Health, Ghana (MoH).
The timeline of nursing history in Australia and New Zealand stretches from the 19th century to the present.
Midwives in the United States assist childbearing women during pregnancy, labor and birth, and the postpartum period. Some midwives also provide primary care for women including well-woman exams, health promotion, and disease prevention, family planning options, and care for common gynecological concerns. Before the turn of the 20th century, traditional midwives were informally trained and helped deliver almost all births. Today, midwives are professionals who must undergo formal training. Midwives in the United States formed the Midwifery Education, Regulation, and Association task force to establish a framework for midwifery.
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.
A midwife is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth, a specialization known as midwifery.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, is the sole governing body that regulates all cadres of nurses and midwives in Nigeria. It was established by government decree in 1979, and re-established as a parastatal by the government of Nigeria by Act Cap. No 143 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004.
Midwives in South Africa are nurses who focus on the care of pregnant women and the delivery of babies. Midwives have the ability to work independently in cases of healthy pregnancies and problem-free deliveries; however, they can refer patients to gynaecologists or obstetricians when complications are diagnosed. The majority of pregnant women in South Africa use the public healthcare system, and most of this care is provided by midwives.
