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Over 110 years of caring.
The Visiting Nurse Service of New York was founded in 1893 by two young nurses, Lillian Wald and Mary Brewster.
At the time, the Lower East Side of Manhattan had the densest population in the world with 1,000 people per acre. Most of the residents were impoverished immigrants who had come to America from Europe with little more than their dreams. They had settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with others who shared their cultural backgrounds - people who spoke the same languages, ate the same foods. Many of the immigrants lived in tenements and worked in gruesome sweat shops where the hours were long, the work hard, and the wages pitiful. Sickness was rampant. Because many of the sick could not afford to leave their jobs or their families in order to be hospitalized, 90% of the sick lived at home.
Down on Henry Street, Lillian Wald, a New York Hospital nursing graduate, was teaching a course to immigrant women on home care and hygiene. One morning a little girl - the daughter of one of Wald's students - came into the classroom, weeping.
"My mother is sick," she said.
Lillian Wald followed the child back to her family's cramped tenement apartment. The girl's young mother lay in a dirty bed soaked with blood. She had been hemorrhaging since giving birth two days earlier.
Wald sprang into action. She ministered care to the woman, cleaned up her bed and room, and comforted the family. The family was extremely poor. The woman's husband, severely disabled, made his livelihood begging on street corners. The family was so grateful to Lillian Wald that when she turned to go, they kissed her hands.
This event changed Lillian Wald's life.
With Mary Brewster's help, Lillian Wald set out to bring nursing services directly into the homes of those who most needed them. In 1893, Wald and Brewster created the Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service, which became the major model for visiting nursing in the United States. Lillian Wald defined public health nursing, which not only seeks to cure the sick patient but also tries to alleviate the underlying causes of disease by improving health education and public health standards. Her vision became the founding of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York - VNSNY.
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