Healthcare's largest profession: from Scutari's lamp to the ICU monitor, the person who is still at the bedside when everyone else has gone home. Nursing is the largest profession in healthcare — roughly 29.8 million people worldwide by the WHO's 2023 count, around half of the entire global health workforce.
The modern profession was invented remarkably recently, and traceably: a German pastor's training institute at Kaiserswerth in 1836, Florence Nightingale's reformed war hospital at Scutari in 1854, her secular training school at St Thomas' Hospital in London in 1860, and New Zealand's world-first registration law in 1901.
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| Measure | Nurse | Painter | You want |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resists AI | |||
| Pay | |||
| Barrier to entry | |||
| Autonomy | |||
| Demand | |||
| Impact |
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Healthcare's largest profession: from Scutari's lamp to the ICU monitor, the person who is still at the bedside when everyone else has gone home. Nursing is the largest profession in healthcare — roughly 29.8 million people worldwide by the WHO's 2023 count, around half of the entire global health workforce.
The modern profession was invented remarkably recently, and traceably: a German pastor's training institute at Kaiserswerth in 1836, Florence Nightingale's reformed war hospital at Scutari in 1854, her secular training school at St Thomas' Hospital in London in 1860, and New Zealand's world-first registration law in 1901.
This page follows that arc from the deaconesses of the early church and the nursing tent of Rufaida Al-Aslamia in seventh-century Medina to today's intensive-care units and nurse practitioners.
Typically three to four years. A bachelor of nursing takes three years in the UK and Australia and four in the US and much of Asia; Germany runs a three-year paid apprenticeship instead. After the degree comes a licensing or registration step — an exam in some countries, credential checks in others — and most new nurses then complete a supervised first year on the wards.
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