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Margaret Sanger

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Margaret (Higgins) Sanger was born on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. She was the sixth of 11 children born into a Roman Catholic working-class class Irish American family. Margaret was taught since a young age to stand up for what she believed in and to make sure she always spoke her mind, she got this from her outspoken radical father. Margaret's family lived in poverty as her father was a stonemason, who preferred to drink and talk politics rather than earn a steady wage for the family. At a young age of 50 after eighteen pregnancies, 11 births and seven miscarriages Margaret's mother died from tuberculosis. After her mother's death Margaret decided she wanted to become a nurse and care for women that were pregnant. Wanting to do better for herself, Margaret attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute in 1896. In 1900, she was wanting to continue her education and transferred to a college in New York City, there she started the nursing program at the White Plains Hospital in 1900. In England in the 1800s, Florence Nightingale led to push the formalization of nursing education with regulations and standards. The United States quickly adopted similar regulations, and the first Nurses Associated Alumnae was established in 1897 to regulate nursing colleges. At this time in the United States nursing was just getting started. Nursing certification and professional training was just being introduced. Healthcare and nursing in the 1900 to 1919 period would change history forever. Nursing during this time would change from the traditional bedside nursing at a home to a more institutional-based nursing within the hospitals. Also during the early 1900's nurses started working at local doctors offices and clinics. Nurses would be in great demand with professional training due to the upcoming wars of World War I and World War II. Margaret changed nursing by speaking out on women's rights on birth-control, sex education and contraceptives. Margaret starting a campaign to educate women about sex in 1912 by writing a newspaper column called "What Every Girl Should Know." The articles dealt with sex education and women's health, two issues that Margaret was passionate about. She also worked as a nurse on the Lower East Side, at the time a predominantly poor immigrant neighborhood. Through her work, Margaret treated a number of women who had undergone back-alley abortions or tried to self terminate their pregnancies. Margaret objected to the unnecessary suffering endured by these women, and she fought to make birth control information and contraceptives available. Margaret began dreaming of a "magic pill" that could be used to control pregnancy. " No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother," Margaret said. In 1914, Margaret started a feminist publication called The Woman Rebel, which promoted a woman's right to have birth control. The monthly magazine landed her in trouble, as it was illegal to send out information through the mail. The Comstock Act of 1873 prohibited the circulation of "obscene and immoral" materials. It also made mailing and importing anything related to these topics a crime also. Rather than go to jail for five years. Margaret left the country and fled to England. While in England she helped with the women's movement and researched other forms of birth control, including diaphragms, which she later smuggled back into the United States. She retuned to the United States in October 1915, after the charges against her for the topics she wrote about had been dropped. She began touring to promote birth control, a term that she coined. In 1916, she opened the first birth control clinic in the United States. Margaret and her staff, including her sister Ethel, were arrested during a raid of the Brooklyn clinic nine days after it opened. They were charged with providing information on contraception and fitting women for diaphragms. Margaret and her sister spent 30 days in jail for breaking the Comstock Law. Later appealing her convictions, she scored a victory for the birth control movement. The court would not change the earlier verdict, but it made an exception for the current law to allow doctors to prescribe their female patients contraception for medical reasons only. I believe that it has changed nursing today by showing other nurses when there is the need for a change and they truly believe in it. They should speak up because they do have a voice and it should be heard for the betterment of others. Birth-control is commonly seen today in stores and easily gotten through your local doctors office. We openly talk about birth-control and offer solutions that many years ago was not allowed. What a huge difference Margaret has brought to us in today's medical care. Margaret has taught me to persevere and not give up even when the time gets tough you push through. You keep fighting for what you believe in and to keep voicing your opinion about it in until your voice is heard. She taught me to speak up when I see that there's a real need for my patients or for anyone until my voice is heard and change takes place. I see that in the medical field today is in nursing homes where I currently work the patient to caregiver ratio needs to shrink. There needs to be more caregivers per patients, so that the patients can receive the care that they deserve. In a lot of nursing homes today and one that I previously worked in a lot of times there's 16 to 17 residents per caregiver and this stresses out the caregiver and the residence get neglected as well. Also the residents do not get the care they deserve. The way that I would handle this or tackle this problem would be to go to our director of nursing and speak with her first and if this doesn't get the issue taken care of. I would proceed by going to the president of the company and seeing if it could be changed for nursing homes company wide. Also knowing that this affects nursing homes state and nationwide, I would then go to the national level and see if I could get it changed so that caregivers across the US would only have no more than 6 to 8 residents on any given shift. I believe the way that it will affect the nurses in 50 years is by giving them a chance to really get to know each of their residents and being able to take the time that is needed for each of those residents to give the care that they are needing. I believe that the quality of life for residents would be longer and a lot better due to the fact that nurses would be able to pay more attention to each of the residents they have. By being able to stay longer with there residents and being able to stay focused on them without feeling that they are rushed to get to the next resident. I also believe this would leave less of a chance for there to be any type of medical error or medication misses. I believe that how it would change society would be Society would have a different outlook and aspect on what nursing homes are. That they do focus on their patients and and the patient doesn't get neglected like they used to because of low staff or not enough caregivers.

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