While the origins of the nursing professional are often traced back to Florence Nightingale, the concept of nursing as an academic discipline is rather more recent. In the wake of World War II, the profession began to change, and in the 1960s the Nurse Training Act began to formalize some of the changes occurring within and to the profession. Between the 1970s and 1980s, nurse training and preparation shifted from diploma programs to associate degrees programs. Martha Rogers and many other nurses began publishing their theories on nursing which sought to conceptualize what it is that nurses do (Smith & Parker, 2015). Rogers conceived of nursing as a separate and essential discipline and a unique field of study. This motivated her to work hard to establish nursing as a discipline in higher education. This was a critical shift for the profession; its impact produced several results.

This shift from diploma programs to associate degrees shifted the instruction of nurses away from physicians and into the hands of people who had a holistic and developed vision of what nursing is: other nurses. The delivery of “high quality nursing care” requires knowledge which is specific and “formalized in nursing conceptual models and theories” (Alligood & Fawcett, 2017, p. 6), yielding an area of knowledge specific and distinct enough to be called a discipline. This in turn cleared the way for other theories to be developed and to formalize the need for research. This was underlined by the creation and adoption of standards of accreditation; in order for a nursing school to confer an accredited degree – meaning the program had undergone and passed the rigors assessment by a professional group of experts – it has to adopt certain curricula and standards (Smith & Parker, 2015). In essence, being recognized as a discipline gave nursing the means by which to understand itself and to present itself to others in a way which contained organized, specific information and evidence of rigorous assessment and self-evaluation that supplemented its strength as an organized profession. As a profession, nursing had certain strengths; as a profession and an academic discipline, nursing has even great strengths and the ability to formally interact with other disciplines in meaningful ways which help clarify and identify problems and solutions within a specific context (in the case of nursing, health and illness, care, and people).

With regard to the lasting impact of this shift, one is that the importance of training nursing educators – or nurses to who train people to be nurses – emerged (Alligood & Fawcett, 2017). This added a new dimension to the profession’s understanding of itself and its obligations to the people and societies it serves (Alligood & Fawcett, 2017). This has also led to the development of new theories regarding how to teach nurses and what nursing education should look like. The importance of ongoing education and training and later advanced practice nursing also emerged, as it became clear that healthcare was and is changing (White, Dudley-Brown, & Terhaar, 2016). Evidence-based practice – that is, practice which underlines the importance of research – also emerged, reflecting the notion that theory alone is not enough to inform practice (White, Dudley-Brown, & Terhaar, 2016). In the midst of all of this, peer-reviewed journals and professional conferences were also begun (Smith & Parker, 2015), all of which support the need for and publication of research which refines the profession’s understanding of its purpose, goals, missions, and practices.

By establishing itself as a unique discipline, nursing has preserved its professional identity, which was not clearly established and distinct when its practitioners were being taught by physicians whose roles in patient care were clearly different from that of nurses (Smith & Parker, 2015). This transition created a lasting impact on the profession, enabling it to improve and refine its practices in a way which benefits both itself and the people it serves.