The register is maintained by the licensing body designated by law to regulate the profession.
These companies maintain lists of nursing personnel, whom they ensure have the proper licensing and training, that they use to refer nurses acting as independent contractors to patients.
Florence Nightingale opposed a single, nationalized registry of nurses.
She notes that a single nationalized register would quickly go out of date, harming newly trained nurses and lending legitimacy to trained nurses who later proved ill-equipped for the job.
Nightingale believed nursing should be autonomous as a profession, rather than under the control of physicians.