Part 1

Florence Nightingale founded the first nursing school which was not only nurse-led but also
had its curriculum. Florence Nightingale was successful in disseminating this model around
the globe and had the aim to transform the status of nursing from being an unstructured
profession without training to being a recognised and successful profession, showcasing the
potential and prominence of the profession (Peres et al., 2021). The pandemic catered to
Nightingale’s objective and placed the nurses at the frontline, improving the visibility with an
opportunity to showcase competence and dedication. The crisis brought on by the pandemic
gave nurses immense autonomy to be able to practise full control over patient care, assisting
during the pandemic, which enhanced the public’s respect, trust and confidence in the
profession. Also, Nightingale’s recommendations like frequent hand washing to prevent
infection were well adopted during the pandemic (Fernandes & Silva, 2020).

Similarly, Mary Seacole created a hospital to support the soldiers who were wounded in the
Crimean War and provided care it respective of gender, race or ethnicity and eliminated
injustice and racism against nurse soldiers. During the pandemic, the nurses were given the
due importance and equity of opportunity to perform and demonstrate skill and competence,
at the same time, to be the top priority (Padilha, 2020).

Part 2
a. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, the government has initiated 20,000
fresh online education portals for registered nurses to be able to enrol, improving skills
and knowledge and develop the professional competency to be able to deliver care in
high-dependency and intensive care units at the time of the pandemic. This is because the
majority of the deaths in Australia due to the pandemic were in critical care units and
highlighting the importance of the role of the nurses in improving patient outcomes in
intensive care units (Commonwealth of Australia | Department of Health and Aged Care,
2023). It was also observed, that some of the patients died without receiving the necessary
intensive care due to a shortage of beds. The government launching online education
portals will not only cater to staff proficiency but will also solve issues like bed shortage.
Having more intensive care nurses will also help in increasing the number of intensive
care beds across Australia to support critical care (Lauck et al., 2022).
Another intervention for the nursing practice in Australia is the refresher course launched
by the government to get back the registered nurses in the workforce who have left the
 profession due to any form of distress during the pandemic (Commonwealth of Australia |
Department of Health and Aged Care, 2023).
b. To ensure the safety of the Australian community, the government of Australia aims to
strengthen the primary care system to ensure effective management of COVID-19 and
make it easy for the population to receive treatment in the community irrespective of
COVID-19 status, Location or social economic status. This strategy will support the
primary care sector in providing timely care to the people which will minimise undue
hospitalisations and mitigate the pressure on the hospitals (Jonnagaddala et al., 2021).
This is because the primary care sector is the first step to healthcare services and if
established effectively can reduce hospital workload. Additionally, the public will be able
to access a national hotline for the management of symptoms at home and refer to
required Health support (Parkinson et al., 2022).
The high-risk Australian population including First Nations people, the elderly, the
disabled population and individuals belonging to CALD will not be left behind and
immediately be treated using rapid testing, treatment and vaccination. Through this step,
the Australian government ensures that the Australian public is well protected from the
current and future pandemics and receives the necessary support without any delay
(Shakespeare-Finch et al., 2020).
c. A change in the healthcare system in response to the pandemic is the independent alliance
of the state and federal governments in Australia. This was to ensure a unified national
response to current and future pandemics which will also enable the country to maintain
its autonomy and decision-making power. This not only helped in combating
disagreements or conflicts at distressing times but also facilitated partnerships between
the various levels of the government (Van Barneveld et al., 2020). Another strategy
adopted by the Australian government to improve healthcare services is Data-led
decision-making. Although, there was no dearth of information during the pandemic and
the government and the public had to adapt to the enormous and conflicting information
available through various portals (Easton et al., 2022).
d. This is an important change as the healthcare services will now adopt a data-led approach
where export professionals will be able to filter out the important information and only
communicate trusted and useful information required for decision-making. This will
allow the Australian healthcare services to focus on what is relevant and also enhance the
trust and partnership between the stakeholders and healthcare consumers (Easton et al.,
2022).
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