ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the political and religious approaches that have given rise to separate and discrete approaches to health care and which are accommodated in today’s modern health services. The contribution to services by nurses is seen as significant, and it is intended that this role will be extended further in the future. The role of the nurse was traditionally more or less regarded as correctional and in helping promote activities of daily living, in contrast to doctors whose role it was to identify, diagnose and combat the somatic consequences of mental suffering. The doctors invariably oversaw the medical management of patients and the work of nurses. Prominent policy-makers in the early part of the twentieth century were convinced that renaming asylums with the title ‘hospital’ would improve the standing of psychiatrists and nurses, while at the same time raise the standard of care provided.
