The work or profession of being a nurse.
Care for sick people provided by a nurse.
Practicing the profession of being a nurse. The American Nurses’ Association defines nursing as “the diagnosis and treatment of human responses to actual or potential health problems.”
Nurses are the largest single group of staff working in the health service. There are more than 686,000 qualified nurses registered with the Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC) in the UK, of whom over half are employed in the National Health Service. Would-be registered nurses (RNs) do either a three-year diploma programme or a four-year degree. An increasing number of nurses are now acquiring degrees, either as their initial qualification or by studying part-time later in their career.
The care and nurturing of healthy and ill people, individually or in groups and communities. The American Nurses Association identifies four essential features of contemporary nursing practice: attention to the full range of human experiences and responses to health and illness without restriction to a problem-focused orientation; integration of objective data with knowledge gained from an understanding of the patient or group’s subjective experience; application of scientific knowledge to the processes of diagnosis and treatment; and provision of a caring relationship that facilitates health and healing.