Florence Nightingale's Change: The Change Of Nursing

The Change of Nursing 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

Nightingale also created the International code of diseases that we still use today (Horsley, 2010). However, Nightingale had a strong passion for improving the nursing profession therefore, coming up with 13 canons that sensible and self explanatory. These 13 canons are able to be broken up into four major concepts Person, Environment, Health, and Nursing (Masters, 2015, p. 29). Nightingale believed nursed should always tend to the patient regardless if their original nurse is present and that the patient should be clean. She also believed that the patients environment shouldn’t be a place where disease can breed (Masters, 2015, p. 27). The patient should also be comfortable, fed, never left alone for long periods of time, and always in proper lighting. Nightingale believed that nursing was an art and a science that required a higher education (Masters, 2015, p. 28). She wanted the nurses to not only maintain this environment for the patients but to monitor the patient and report it (Masters, 2015, p. 27). Lastly, Nightingale believed that health was not only the absent of disease but when the patient is able to maintain a healthy life style. Nightingale improved many hospitals by designing them accordingly to her environmental

One of which is person “the recipient of nursing care” (Finkleman & Kenner, 2013, p. 28). I feel two of Nightingale’s canons are based on the patient petty management and personal cleanliness. Environment is the second concept which Nightingale explains “the external and internal environment” of the patient (Finkleman & Kenner, 2013, p. 29). I believe nine of Nightingales canons are aimed towards this concept ventilation and warmth, health of the house, noise, variety, food intake, food, bed and bedding, light, and cleanliness of room and walls. Nursing is the third concept which Nightingale believes they “alter or manage the environment to implement the natural laws of health” (Finkleman & Kenner, 2013, p. 28). I feel the two canons chattering hopes and advice, and observation of the sick best explains this concept. Lastly, the concept of Health, Nightingale believed that health is not only the absence of disease but being able to utilize everything that we are. I believe that the previous three concepts must be fulfilled to achieve the last and final concept because the patient is effected by the environment and the