Role of Nursing in the Healthcare Profession

In the early 1900s, doctors dominated the ranks of the healthcare profession, aided by a small number of nurses and other professional health workers (Fitzhugh, 2002, 112). Today, doctors are dwarfed by the number and variety of other healthcare workers with overlapping boundaries among the licensed domains of individual healthcare professions. As well as the regular nurses there are advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, psychologists, social workers, optometrists, and podiatrists, categories of healthcare professionals which didn't exist in the early 1900s (112).

Technological innovations in every field are changing the way medicine, and nursing, are practiced (Fitzhugh, 2002, 112). Computerized information systems aim to standardize patient records and bring all patient data together in one place for instant retrieval. Although advanced technology requires specialists in specific areas, generalists will be required to provide practical, working interpretations of the results which can be passed on and utilized in patient care. Patients will still require primary care, and help with the complicated decisions necessitated by the results from the new technology. As technologies blur the limits of knowledge distribution, legislative contests over ranges of practice for physicians, nurse anesthetists, nurse practitioners, etc. is likely to heat up. The concept of doctoral degrees for nurses may emerge as the use of nurse practitioners in anesthesiology, mid

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