Florence Nightingale's Theory

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.

Sometimes in war a person can learn new things that can befit the world. Nightingale saw that most soldiers were dying from illness and not from there injures that they had received. ("Florence nightingale," 2011) She observed the environment that the patients were in, and notice that most of them did not have adequate nutrition, and their environment was not clean. ("Florence nightingale," 2011) The changes she made in the ward included a better nutrition and a sanitary environment these changes greatly decreased the mortality rate which was at a 42% then drop to 2% ("Florence nightingale," 2011) Nightingale believed that a patient environment affected the healing process for the patient. Nightingale states, “Nursing out to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and then proper selection and administration of diet.” (Alligod & Tomey, 2006) Nightingale created 13 canons, which revolves around nurse to critical think and how the nurse can change the environment. An example of one of her Canons is noise, states “asses the noise level in the client room and surrounding area. Attempt to keep noise level to a minimum.”(Alligod & Tomey, 2006)

Nightingale refers to the person as, “The one who is receiving care,” (Alligod & Tomey, 2006). According to Reed and Zurakowski , “Nightingale envisioned the person as comprising physical, intellectual, emotion, social and spiritual components.” The patient will have physical needs such as, sleep, eating, water, and food. If a patient is lacking one of this the patient is at risk of becoming ill. Some patient might not eat their food, since they do not like to eat alone, the nurse should sit with the patient while they eat, or ask a family member to stay with them while they eat. By doing this small change the nurse has resolved the physical need of food and a social need in finding a person to talk to.

Nightingale’s definition of environment is made of two components, which are physical and psychological.