title: [Looking over the progress of care. Historical and ethical aspects of the relations between health professionals and patients].
abstract: If the idea of care materializes by a friendly behaviour, word or movement, the characters who implemented it have seemed, over the history, motivated by varied ideals. Certainly, their name, status and role have not always been precisely described; but their intervention happens to be bound to moral and scientific requirements enriched by collective representations. So after the nobility welcome of the wandering, impoverished and sick stranger, related by Homeric and biblical narratives, the more or less protected professional organization has appeared on behalf of the Greek city, then the Roman one. The image of the suffering Christ has then imposed itself where the distress of the patient could be read; it constituted the engine of the charity due to the latter, whose demonstrations proliferated in the Middle Ages. However, because of the necessary disease prevention in front of epidemics which stressed the increasing opportunities of war and travel, a more and more complex institutional organization has established itself little by little bound to technical and political considerations. More precisely, in the last two centuries, the social unrest bearing aspiration to public health and people's safety has underlied Republican ideals of freedom, solidarity and individual expression. This is what the Nursing staff duty - officially recognized as "healthcare professionals" - responds to today to ensure favorable conditions to the dawn of feelings of comfort, self-fulfillment and respect. As much by caring and listening they ensure as by technical acts they operate, they in fact, participate in the implementation of a distribution of common wealth. Health and welcome of the most deprived therefore constitute, thanks to their thoughtful intervention, the stammerings of a policy of active citizenship.
authors.affiliation: C.I.C.E.R.F., Champs-sur-Marne. cicerf@wanadoo.fr
authors.forename: Roland-Ramzi
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Geadah
mesh_terms: D006676:History of Nursing; D049668:History, 15th Century; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D028701:Patient Rights / Q000266:history; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations