A nurse is somebody who is trained to care for sick or injured people. Most of them work at hospitals, doctor's office, nursing homes and schools. Nursing has been one of the biggest professions for many years and there has been drastic changes over the years. Some of the changes include salary, technology, uniforms, education required to become a nurse and the role play of men in the nursing field. One of the major changes over the years has been salary in the nursing profession. In the past, a fully trained private nurses netted $5 per week. Some nurses were housekeepers and cooked for families at fifty cents an hour, but nowadays no nurse is a housekeeper or cooks for families unless the nurse owns the facility herself and takes care of the patients herself. A general duty nurse in 1966, earned the sum of $5,200 for a year's worth of service (A History of Nursing). Many nurses today bring home in a month what the nurses of the 1960's and 1970's earned in a full year of service. This salary change for nurses from an average salary of $2,100 in 1946 is the direct result of a nursing shortage that was deemed critical at the time (Blanche, p. 8). Nowadays professional nurses make $10 per hour and above. Nursing assistants make about 20,000 dollars and above yearly. Vocational Nurses make about 40,000 dollars and above yearly. Registered Nurses make 60,000 dollars and above yearly but it also depends on what city you live in, some make less and some make more. .
Another change in the nursing profession is technology. Back in the 1900's there weren't any computers that nurses could use and mostly everything was done manually (Waszak, p.1). In the 1900's, nurses used something called "The Kardex," which was a large folded card and was used as an important document of all patient activities, and medicines. Also, it was hand-written in pencil so it could be erased and updated as needed.