The nursing profession is believed to be founded and pioneered by Florence Nitingale, a British-born woman who committed herself to the nursing profession. However, during her time, the nursing profession was not at all highly regarded because nurses were from poor families, which is an irony because Florence came from an affluent family.

Having briefly traced the origin of nursing, at present, the nursing profession has gained so much respect in most countries, more specifically in the United Kingdom since their very own Florence Nightingale is the founder of nursing.

In the United Kingdom, nurses are basically recognized based on the level of their “competency” if we may term it that way. There are what we call the non-registered staff nurses who are also termed as NHCA or nurse health care assistant, AN or auxiliary nurse, or NA or nursing assistant- they have direct contact with the patients in the ward; while the other group of nurses in the country are the registered staff which is further categorized into the following: first level nurses (who make up the majority of nurses in the country), the second level nurses (or the State-enrolled nurses), and specialist nurses (who have worked in a field of expertise and had undergone a series of intensive trainings and further education). However, there are still a much more number of categories of nurses in the country. Nurses are rated based on a salary scale known as the Whitley system, which is a pay scale grading system in United Kingdom.