History of emergency nursing

Emergency care can be said to have started from the nightingale era. During the Crimean War between 1854 and 1856, the death rate of British soldiers wounded at the front line was as high as 42%. Nightingale led 38 nurses to the first-line hospital for emergency treatment, which significantly reduced the mortality rate to about 2%. It shows that effective rescue and emergency nursing technology is very important to the success rate of rescue for the wounded and sick.

In the early 1950s, polio was prevalent in the anterior horn of spinal cord in northern Europe. Many patients are accompanied by respiratory muscle paralysis and cannot breathe spontaneously, but the treatment with "iron lung" and corresponding special nursing techniques has achieved good results. This is the world's earliest "intensive care unit" for monitoring patients with respiratory failure. In 1960s, with the development of electronic instruments and equipment, emergency nursing technology entered a new stage with the cooperation of rescue equipment. The application of ECG oscilloscope, electric defibrillator, artificial respiration machine and hemodialysis machine has made the nursing theory and technology develop accordingly. At the end of 1960s, the intensive use of modern monitoring instruments and equipment promoted the establishment of ICU. In the mid-1970s, with the participation of the International Red Cross, a medical conference was held in West Germany, and the policy of internationalization, international mutual assistance and standardization of first aid was put forward, requiring ambulances to be equipped with necessary instruments, unify emergency telephone numbers internationally and exchange emergency experience.

Early emergency care in China only concentrated critically ill patients in wards or emergency rooms near nurses' stations to facilitate nurses' close observation and nursing. After the operation, the patient is sent to the postoperative resuscitation room first, and then transferred to the ward after waking up. Later, various specialized or comprehensive intensive care units were established one after another. In 1980s, emergency centers in Beijing and Shanghai were formally established, which promoted the development of emergency medicine and emergency nursing and started a new stage of emergency nursing development.