Nursing literature
Nursing literature includes journals and books about nursing. Thanks to Florence Nightingale, nursing became a scientific field and an independent part of health care.
The first nursing journal was The Nightingale, published on March 6, 1886. In 1900, the American Journal of Nursing began, and it is the oldest nursing journal still in publication. The first journal devoted to nursing research, Nursing Research, appeared in 1952. As nursing grew, many more journals started, including ones for different nursing specialties.
Nursing journals are the main way the profession shares information and research. They are usually peer‑reviewed and include editorials, original research, and various study types such as randomized controlled trials, observational studies, systematic reviews, meta‑analyses, and qualitative research. Some journals also publish case reports.
With the rise of evidence‑based nursing, the number of journals increased even more. Most nursing articles are indexed in the PubMed database and in other databases like CINAHL.
Nightingale wrote extensively. Her key work, Notes on Nursing, gave practical guidance for caregivers on caring for the sick and promoting health. It is considered the first important scientific writing about nursing care, even though it was not a textbook.
The first scholarly nursing textbook is generally said to be Text-Book of the Principles and Practice of Nursing by Bertha Harmer, a Canadian nurse and early educator. Virginia Henderson is recognized as an early nurse educator who helped turn nursing writings into textbooks used in schools of nursing.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 13:28 (CET).