Florence Nightingale, the First Nursing Theorist

Florence Nightingale, named after the Italian city she was born in, was born to a family of upper class citizens on May 12, 1820 (Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910). She grew up educated in many languages and subjects and one day, “Nightingale felt that God was calling her to do some work, but wasn't sure what that work should be,” then she began developing a passion for nursing (Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910). Her parents did not approve of this passion because they felt it was a job for the lower class, but they eventually relented and sent her off to nursing school (Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910). Nightingale attended a nursing school in Kaiserwerth, Germany in 1851, and by 1853, she had become the superintendent of a hospital in Harley Street (Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910). After that, in 1854, she was asked to oversee the nurses in the Crimean War and Nightingale went, with 38 other women, to take care of the ill and wounded soldiers (Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910). This is where Nightingale began her work and developed her theory that improvement in sanitation, and the environment, would improve the health of the ill and wounded soldiers.

Florence Nightingale believed that nursing was very different from medicine. Nightingale “defined nursing as putting the person in the best condition for nature to act, insisting that the focus of nursing was on health and the natural healing process, and not on a disease,” and she wanted to create an environment that provided these conditions (Parker & Smith, 2010). This was the beginning of her theory’s development. When she first arrived at the hospital in Turkey and saw the conditions the soldiers were in, she had to do something about it. She diagrammed the number of deat...

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...100 years later. She followed her calling and because she did so, today we have excellent standards for nurses that Nightingale brought about in her day.

Works Cited

Audain, C. (1998). Florence Nightingale. Biographies of Women Mathematicians. Retrieved January 29, 2014, from http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/nitegale.htm

Florence Nightingale. (n.d.). BBC News. Retrieved January 31, 2014, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/famouspeople/florence_nightingale/

Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910). (n.d.). BBC News. Retrieved January 28, 2014, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/nightingale_florence.shtml

Nightingale, F. (1860). Notes on nursing: what it is, and what it is not. New York: D. Appleton and Company.

Parker, M. E., & Smith, M. C. (2010). Nursing theories & nursing practice (3rd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: F.A. Davis Co.