The development of nursing and nursing education in Venda from 1911 to 1990

Abstract

The development ofNursing and Nursing Education in Venda is intimately related to the work of the early missionaries, Western education and medical developments. The growth of nursing and health services had a reciprocal relationship. One was not possible without the other, viz the history of missionary education, hospitals, health services, sociocultural and political development. Each stage ofthese developments was an important step in laying the foundation of modem professional nursing and nursing education. Before contact with Western medicine, health and midwifery services were provided by traditional healers, nurses and midwives. Divination was used to: diagnose disease, identify the witch, determine medicines to cure the disease. Western nursing developed through stages of: lay nursing, hospital certificated, auxiliary nurses and midwives, registered nurses and midwives, comprehensive general nurse and midwife. The history of Nursing and Nursing Education is thus part and parcel of the social developments of the country it serves.