Years Devoted to Public Health Nursing: World Examples of Public Health Nursing Pioneers

Abstract

Community health care needs that have emerged from health problems due to social, political, and environmental factors have increased the importance and development of public health nursing. As the pioneers of the creation of contemporary public health nursing implementations, the acknowledgment of the practices of public health nurses is crucial for future planning in this field. In Turkish nursing literature, very few studies have addressed these issues. This study aims to introduce the public health nurses that have influenced public health nursing and its development through history. Within the scope of the biographies of pioneering public health nurses, features such as the countries they lived in; the nursing education they received; their reasons for choosing nursing; their nursing practice; the position of women at the time; the social, economic conditions, and health problems of the time; the people they were influenced by and those they influenced; and the support they received or the barriers they faced were reviewed from a historical perspective.