100 Years of Nursing Training

Anniversaries

100 years of nursing training in Slovenia

In 2024 nursing care in Slovenia and, with it, the profession of nurse – encompassing various levels of qualification and including both women and men – celebrates an important anniversary. There have been many changes in professional care for people, both sick and healthy, in Slovenia over the course of the last century and the nursing profession has undergone enviable development. A century of activity has brought enormous development of individual activities, education, research, publishing and also moral and ethical (self-)reflection, without which professions in which people care for their fellow human beings could not exist.

In 1923 a “School for Sisters” was established within the Institute for the Social and Hygienic Protection of Children, in Ljubljana. Lessons began on 4 January 1924, a date that represents one of the first milestones in the development of professional nursing training in Slovenia. Those who embarked on training at this time were women, who symbolised the rise and development of the nursing profession with their light blue-and-white uniforms. They were known as care sisters. The most prominent care sister of the period before the Second World War was Angela Boškin, who over the course of her career contributed a great deal to the professionalisation of nursing.

In 1946 the school was renamed the School of Nursing and, from then on, care sisters were known as nurses. Further education for nurses was introduced in 1951. Many years later nursing began to be taught at university level, with several institutions in Slovenia offering nursing degrees today. These days the legacy of the original care sisters is continued by both female and male nurses.

Irena Keršič

Chamber of Nursing and Midwifery of Slovenia –

Association of Professional Societies of Nurses, Midwives and Medical Technicians