Florence Nightingale is a very prominent person in the medical field. She had a strong desire to devote her life to helping others. She is known as the founder of modern medicine. The Nightingale Pledge is taken by new nurses and was named in her honor. The annual International Nurses Day is celebrated on her birthday. Without her contributions healthcare would not be what it is today. 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. …show more content…
She served as a nurse and tended to wounded soldiers. She became known as “The Lady with the Lamp” after she made her nightly rounds by lamplight. On October 21, 1854 she and her staff of 38 volunteer women nurses, that she trained, were sent to the Ottoman Empire. They traveled 295 miles by sea to where the British camp was based. They arrived in November 1854 and were appalled when they found the poor care given to the injured soldiers. The current medical staff was overworked, there was a shortage of medications, hygiene was being neglected and fatal infections were common. The men were kept in rooms without blankets or enough food. They were unwashed and still wore their dirty uniforms. The medical staff on hand objected to her views and felt her comments were belittling them as professionals. Both the military officers in charge and the doctors made her feel unwelcome. During her first winter in Scutari, 4077 soldiers died. Ten times more soldiers perished from illnesses such as typhus, typhoid, cholera and dysentery than from actual battle wounds. She sent back a plea for help from the British. The government had a hospital commissioned and designed in England and shipped over to Scutari. This resulted in the death rate being reduced from 42% to 2%, either by making improvements in hygiene herself, or by requesting the Sanitary Commission. Six months after she arrived at the camp, the British government …show more content…
In November 1856 a Nightingale fund was set up to found a training school specifically for nurses. In 1860 she laid the foundation of modern nursing when she established her nursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. It was the first nursing school in the world. Nightingale spent the rest of her life promoting and spreading medical knowledge. She especially promoted and organized the nursing profession. She died at the age of 90 peacefully in her bed on August 13,
notices to patients and their families, schedule and lead the meetings. Wishing to be actively involved in the process, I represented nursing along with the charge nurse of the unit and the charge aide.
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.
In 1854 the legendary Florence Nightingale received a letter from the Secretary of War asking to organize a corps of nurses to clean and tend to the sick soldiers in the Crimea. Haltingly, young Florence and the nurses were shipped over to Scutari where the British base hospital was located. On the fourth of November in 1854, arrived in Turkey and witnessed the poor care for soldiers that were being treated by a worn out medical staff. Conditions were unbearable to her, soldiers lying in their own excrement through the hospital's hallways, the hospital was infested with rodents and bugs. The most common medical supplies such as bandages and soap were nowhere to be found. Outraged by the way the health of the common soldier was being treated
“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).
Replacing by monetized service appeared to be dishonoured (Robinson 2005). According to Dingwall et. al. (1988), since 1948 the idea of the hospital, nurses, doctors and health care started to be pretty clear. Looking at health care system in 1800 there was not legal term which could apply to the medical practice or define the role of the medical professionals. History of the nursing profession started to be shaped towards the organisation with the person of Florence Nightingale who contributed as a nurse in the Crimean War and had influential views (Abel-Smith 1960) on the healthcare sector those days. Although Nightingale high social connection and excellent education she gained could provide her with prospectfull career, she decided that there is higher task for herself where sick, poor and less fortunate calling for her help. Florence influenced by her religion believed that she needs to help others from the will of God (Pulliam 2014). Her attitude and important connections with social politic side made the possibility to introduced the changes and improve the public health, which was noticeable especially in the hospitals. Nightingale had significant impact and shaped modern nursing profession. She was determinate to never repeat the errors she witnessed during the Crimean War. Florence book, Notes on Nursing (1859) according to Alligood (2013) is about the clinical observation where Nightingale presenting the difference between the specifically trained nurses and the care
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 The ongoing education and training which supports the nursing as a profession must be maintained. The self-concept of nurses is enormously important in maintaining a professional identity. ‘Nurses’ self-concept can be defined as information and belief that nurses have about their roles, values and behaviours’ (Takase et al. 2002, p. 197; Hoeve et al.
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.
The Contributions Made by Louis Pasture, Florence Nightingale and James Simpson to Medical Science James young who was professor of midwifery at Edinburgh University, experimented on himself and his assistants to find a more effective anaesthetic than ether which had been developed in the USA but had been found to cause a nasty cough to patients. In 1847 he tested chloroform and found it to be a much less potent substance than ether. He reported his discoveries, but without a proper system of regulation in place, the substance was misused and caused the death of a 15-year-old girl by another doctor. The medical profession became less sceptical however, when in 1853 Queen Victoria was successfully anaesthetised with chloroform during the birth of her ninth child and the procedure one again became commonly used.
Nursing theory is, “the principle 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, it is hard to do that sometime working in the emergency room. Sometimes it is the little things that a nurse can do for a patient that will make all the difference. Taking both of these theories into
In 1849 Florence went abroad to study the European hospital system. In 1853 she became the superintendent for the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen in London. In 1854 Florence raised the economic and productive aspect of women's status by volunteering to run all the nursing duties during the Crimean War. With her efforts the mortality rates of the sick and wounded soldiers was reduced. While being a nurse was her profession and what she was known for, she used statistics to achieve...
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.
To this day, the most admired person in nursing history would be Florence Nightingale. She will forever be an influential figure in the world of nursing due to her perseverance and critical thinking skills that saved so many lives during the Crimean War. There is no way to tell how long it could have taken nursing to evolve without the help of Nightingale. In her book, Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not, Nightingale described a multitude of factors that must be considered when helping the ill to recover and to have the healthy maintain their well-being (Nightingale, 1860/1969). Four chapters in her book are of high importance, chapter two, on Health of Homes, chapter
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 is a respected reformer of modern times. The book Notes on Nursing contains the thoughts about Nightingale by nursing-theorists and some of today’s nurse leaders. Florence Nightingale was committed to improving the misery and unhealthy living conditions of people all over the world (Schuyler, 1992, p.3). In this paper I will be using Nightingale’s Thirteen Canons to discuss what nursing is and what it is not.