Analysis Of Florence Nightingale's Thirteen Canons

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. Florence Nightingale’s first of Thirteen Canons is Ventilation and Warming. According to Nightingale (1859/1992) “the first rule of nursing is to keep the air within as pure as the air without” (p.8). Being a nurse means thinking about little things to help the patient such as opening a window and letting fresh air in. By opening the window for a few minutes it allows the patient to know the nurse has considered his or her well-being. The second of the Thirteen Canons is Health of Houses. There are five essential points to the health of houses: pure air, pure water,

This canon describes what nursing is not. Nursing is not devoting 24 hours a day and seven days a week to their patient, this is simply impossible. Nightingale (1859/1992) stated, “At all events, one may safely say, a nurse cannot be with the patient, open the door, eat her meals, take a message, all at one and the same time” (p.21-22). Nurses are not able to do all of their tasks at the same time. The forth of the Thirteen Canons is noise. It is not the loudness of the noise that hurts the patient; it is the effect that the noise has on the organ of the ear itself that affects the sick patient. A nurse is not to allow a patient “to be waked intentionally or accidently” (Nightingale, 1859/1992, p.25). Nursing is not to only think of the patient’s health and cleanliness but to also think of their own cleanliness. In the eleventh of Thirteen Canons, Personal Cleanliness, Nightingale (1859/1992)