Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale was born in 1820. She came from an upper class
family that saw her future getting married and raising children.
Florence had very different viewpoint, she believed that God wanted
her to be a nurse. She fought the OPPOSITION from her parents and
studied in Europe from 1849 and in Alexandria in 1850. By 1853, she
was the Superintendent at the Institution for the Care of Sick
Gentlewomen and she was very interested in the training of nurses.
In March 1854 the Crimean War broke out. Telegraphic COMMUNICATIONS
were used by war correspondents to broadcast stories back home to
encourage people to have opinions on the war and take interest. Many
horror stories emerged about the Barrack Hospital in Scutari, where
the British wounded were being treated. Sidney Herbert, the Secretary
of War and a personal friend of the Nightingale family, made an appeal
to Florence to sort out the nursing care in Scutari. Despite the
OPPOSITION from the military, Florence took 38 handpicked nurses to
work in the hospital. She employed many new standards; privacy
curtains, cleaning of sheets, food for patients and she even hired 200
builders to rebuild a ward block. In six months she had managed to
reduce the death rate in the hospital from 42% to 2%.
After two successful years in the Crimea, Florence returned to Britain
with a mission. She appealed to the Queen, sent an 800 page report to
the government and wrote a book, "Notes on Nursing" which explained
all her methods. This became the standard textbook for generations. By
1860, it was a best seller! Florence had raised £44,000 and she used
this money to set up the Nightingale School of Nursing, in St.
Thomas's Hospital, London. Discipline, order and attention to detail
were prime factors in her teaching. She also wanted nurses to remain
single so that they wouldn't have divided loyalties. She had turned
down many offers of marriage. Of the 38 nurses she had taken to the
Crimea, 24 were nuns, this was partly due to the fact that there was
Senior Officers were more inclined to have trained male soldiers in preference to female nurses. Major General Howse (Director of Medical Services) has been quoted as saying that “the female nurse (as a substitute for the fully trained male nursing orderly) did little toward the actual saving of life in war... although she might promote a more rapid and complete recovery”. General Howse was speaking at a time when the contribution of the Nursing Service to the treatment of the wounded soldiers, at an early stage, had yet to be recognized by the Australian authorities.
In particular, the use of Florence Nightingale’s theory of nursing as the basis of my new practice had allowed me to begin with the basics and work my way forward toward a more modern and holistic approach to nursing care. While Florence’s work focused mainly on the military and her care of soldiers, she began to establish schools of nursing to promote nursing education and to encourage people to view nursing as a viable profession, (Alligood, 2014. 63). Nightingale’s focus may have been care of the military, but she made great strides on getting recognition for nursing and her theories still affect the practice of nursing today. In the article, Nurses as Leaders, the author proposes that nurse leaders have made great strides since Nightingale’s time when nurses were conscripted to help care for wounded soldiers. Such a setting required these early nurse pioneers to rely on critical thinking and quick action in order to save lives. The author goes on to discuss how a change in nursing occurred in the early 20th century as new management styles emerged, most notable the “Scientific Management,” model. This style placed doctors at the top, then nurse managers, and on down to bedside care staff. Though this did allow some nurses the ability to move upward, nurses resented a doctor being in charge of their teams as the work of a physician and that of a nurse are two very different practices, ("Nurses as Leaders," 2016). This is quite different from the modern concept of a nurse executive as leader of
According to O’Neill (2014), the beginning of nursing began in the 1500s (pg. 1). Back in those days, nurses visited patients at home and they were directed by priest-physicians (O’Neill, pg. 1, 2014). The perception of people getting sick was often believed to be associated by a sin or it was god’s will for the patient to be ill. Therefore, priests were also known as physicians. However, there are other people who believe that nursing profession began in the mid-1800s with the work of Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale was an English woman who felt that god sent her to be nurse in this life. Her extensive devotion towards this profession made her an icon in the history of nursing. Her belief towards nursing is our framework to or nursing practice. Her beliefs are the following: nutrition, fresh and clean environments, identifying and meeting the patient’s needs, nurses should be directed to health and illness, and continuing education about nursing (O’Neill, pg.2, 2014). These
Before Nightingale, nurses were lower class citizens that were alcoholics or prostitutes with no to a little education. Florence Nightingale realized that nurses ought to have some education in caring for others and be of a higher class. In 1860, she opened the first nursing school in London that did not accept prostitutes and alcoholics. To signify Nightingale’s view of nursing, Lystra Gretter composed a Hippocratic Oath for nurses called the Nightingale pledge.
“Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion. Remember he is face to face with his enemy all the time, internally wrestling with him” (Nightingale, 1992, p. 22). Fortunately, in the nineteenth century, Florence Nightingale recognized uncertainty could cause harm to her patients (Nightingale, 1992). Equally important to the nursing profession are the nursing theorists, their work, and the evolution of the theories that followed Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing (Alligood, 2014).
Florence Nightingale was a pioneer in nursing and maintained it as an independent profession which was not secondary to the medical profession but equal. *Nightingale 1969 cited by Hoeve et al 2013
Her success in doing so was due to her concern with the sanitation of the hospital. When Nightingale arrived in Crimea on the British Base, Scutari, she was met with filthy floors, bugs, and rats under the beds (History.com, 2009). This is when Florence took action and began to sanitize and clean the hospital as best she could. In doing so she showed her problem solving characteristics. She also showed that she was a confident leader by getting these things done even if she had to argue with the military officers who considered her a nuisance (Fee, E.). Florence soon became known as “The Lady with the Lamp” or the “Angel of Crimea” (History.com, 2009). She was given these names because she spent every minute caring for her soldiers. She would make her rounds through the dark hallways in the evenings carrying her lamp (History.com, 2009). As the leader of her nurse corps Nightingale set the example that the patient should be first and she showed this through her actions and her compassion toward
Registered nurses work to contribute good health and prevent illness. They also treat patients and help go through there rehabilitation and also give support and advice to patients family. Registered nurses are general-duty nurses who focus in the achievement of caring for their patients. They are under the supervision of a doctor. As I researched this career It brought more questions to my life. It became a big interest that soon I would have an opportunity to answer my own questions obviously with the help of others.
Nursing was not always the profession we know it as today. “Nurses were often lower class, usually had no education, and were often alcoholics, prostitutes, and women who were down on their luck” (Finkleman & Kenner, 2013, p. 9). There was a high morality rate due to the lack of training and unkept environment the patients stayed in. However, when Florence Nightingale came into the nursing world everything changed. She believed that nurses shouldn’t be lower-class alcoholic women but women of higher class with an education. Therefore, she opened a school in London to train and educate women because “Nursing is an art and a science” (Masters, 2015, p. 29). She believed an average person should be able to understand medical
Nursing theory is, “the principles that underpin practice and help to generate further nursing knowledge” (Colley, 2003, p. 33). Nursing theory is important in nursing practice. The two theorists that are relevant to my nursing practice are Florence Nightingale and Hildegard Peplau. Florence Nightingale theory was about the patient having a clean and healing environment (Smith & Park, 2015, p. 51). The theory that Hildegard Peplau created was the importance of nurse-patient relationships (Smith & Park, 2015, p. 68). Both of these theories put the patient’s safety and care first. When I am at work I try to form a healthy and healing relationship with all my patients. I also make sure the environment that they are in is conducive to healing,
Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy. Her parents named her after the city she was born in. She was born on May 12,1980, she was raised mostly in Derbyshire England. Many people when they hear Florence Nightingale think about her as a nurse and for her fight for better hospital care. Florence did a lot more in her life than achieve better hospital conditions, and become a nurse. She was a brilliant mathematician, and used statistics to apply them to achieve her reforms. Florence was a well-educated woman in a number of fields other than math; she had been educated in history, economics, astronomy, science, philosophy, and a number of languages. Her mother taught her how to be social and leadership qualities. Florence was born in an upper-class lifestyle but she didn't like it. She didn't do things that the typical upper-class child would do, she would care for sick and injured pets, and when she was older she took care of servants who were sick. This is what started her up on her mission as a nurse.
Florence Nightingale was born May 12, 1820 in Florence, Italy to a rich, upper-class British family. Her parents, William Edward and Frances Nightingale, named her after the city of her birth. Her father treated her as his friend and companion since he did not have a son. Mr. Nightingale took over as her primary educator and taught her a variety of subjects.
A theory I can relate to is Nightingales theory, I found her theory to be extremely interesting. A patient health is affected by the environment that they are in, whether it is at the hospital or at their house. Once a patient is discharged the nurse should be aware of the patient home environment, what they have access to, and what they don’t have.
Before the modernization and reform of their profession in the mid-1800s, nurses were believed to perform “women’s work”, which implied menial duties, unskilled service, and an overall lack of skill (Garey, "Sentimental women need not apply"). This mentality was substantiated by the “untrained attendants, [including] past patients, vagrants, and prostitutes,” that performed a variety of nursing tasks (Garey). Florence Nightingale’s nursing experiences during the Crimean War, her subsequent publication of Notes on Nursing, and her work to build up professionalism within the field transformed the way that the world and society viewed nursing. She introduced invigorating ideas of patient care, nursing roles and responsibilities, and was a strong proponent of nursing education. Nightingale’s overall work inspired and changed the profession of nursing, laying the foundation for its
Florence Nightingale, named after the city of Florence, was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820. She would pursue a career in nursing and later find herself studying data of the soldiers she so cringingly looking after. Born into the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale took the lead role amongst her and her colleges to improve the inhabitable hospitals all across Great Britten; reduce the death count by more than two-thirds. Her love for helping people didn’t go unnoticed and would continue to increase throughout her life. In 1860 she opened up the St. Tomas’ Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses before passing August 13, 1910 in London. Her willingness to care for her patients was never overlooked and wound establishing