The meaning and place of spirituality in the education of student nurses from the mid 1800s to the present time (Florence Nightingale)

The care of sick and injured persons has existed since the earliest human societies. With few methods for effectively treating and curing disease until the nineteenth century, nursing care in the West was provided primarily by religious orders of men and women, who were often the only ones willing to risk contracting disease and sacrificing their own lives for the sake of serving God.; Having discerned a “calling” from God to become a nurse, and having received her initial inspiration and instruction from the Catholic Daughters of Charity and the Lutheran Kaiserwerth Deaconesses, Florence Nightingale introduced the idea of nursing as a profession and established the first school for the education of professional secular nurses in 1860. Her methods for educating future nurses effectively integrated the spiritual development of the student with scientific and professional education. Advances in science and cultural developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, contributed to a gradual shift in the meaning and place of spirituality in nursing education.; This study explores the changes in the meaning and place of spirituality in basic nursing education from the mid 1800s to the present time. The study begins with an historical overview of the changing meanings of the term “spirituality” from Biblical times to the present era. A presentation of Florence Nightingale's theology and vision for nursing follows. Social and cultural developments that contributed to changing views regarding spirituality in American society are then presented from the perspectives of scholars in various disciplines including sociology, philosophy, theology, psychology, and education. The views of American nurse scholars toward spirituality, as they developed and changed through the decades, are then presented. The study concludes with a critique of current perspectives on the meaning and place of spirituality in nursing education and the presentation of possible alternatives to the integration of spirituality in nursing education that take into account religious pluralism, multiculturalism, and globalization.