When hospitalized, most Americans expect they will receive nursing care from a registered professional nurse paid for and supplied by the hospital. This assumption is correct.
Twenty-first century American hospitals employ large staffs of registered nurses (RNs) who meet specific educational, professional, and legal requirements. This, however, was not always the case. In the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hospitals did not employ a regular nursing staff but rather used a system of care delivery called private duty nursing. This article explores this system of:
What Was Private Duty Nursing?
Why a Private System of Nursing Care Delivery?
Why didn’t hospitals just hire trained nurses?
What Did Private Duty Nurses Do?
What Were the Advantages and Disadvantages of Private Duty Nursing?
What Was the Private Duty System Like?
and more!
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