Also branded as ‘The Lady with the Lamp,’ Florence Nightingale was born on 12th May 1820 into a well-connected and wealthy British family In Florence, Italy. Her parents were William Shore Nightingale and Frances Nightingale, and Florence was the younger of her two siblings. She inherited a humanitarian outlook from both sides of the family, which modeled her to be a nurse. At a young age, Florence supported the ill, poor, and needy people from the villages neighbouring her family’s land and was involved in charity since her younger age. She was a British nurse, author, statistician, social reformer, and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale assisted as nurse trainer and manager during the course of the Crimean War (1853 to 1856). Her experience during the War was fundamental, especially on her opinions about health and sanitation, and in 1860 she established Nightingale Training school for nurses and St. Thomas Hospital in London. (Silva and Ferreira, 2021) Since then, her experience and hard work have greatly influenced and made a path for the quality of healthcare and nursing to date.
Branded as the founder of modern nursing, she has a massive catalog of contributions to the nursing profession: sanitation. During the War, Nightingale and the nurses she trained were sent to Ottoman Empire to care for the wounded soldiers. They identified problems but implemented elementary but effective solutions. For example, they disinfected the latrines, reduced overcrowding and imposed a 3-foot distance amongst patients, improved ventilation and flashing of sewer several times a day. These simple activities vastly improved sanitation, and the hospital environment upgraded radically. After about six months since their arrival, the mortality rate reduced from 42.7% to 2.2%. Her situation monitoring capability was excellent (Pattison et el., 2022). Nightingale’s paid attention to everything that was going on in the facility. For example, when a soldier dies, she keeps a record and even observes the reason behind the demise. The recorded information was represented in charts. It identified deprived sanitation as the main problem behind the period of war mortalities; she even persuaded the government to change strategies to prevent these preventable fatalities. This Cleary indicates that some of Nightingale’s most extraordinary and essential contributions in nursing were good sanitation, record keeping, and analysis. These two aspects primarily affected the overall outcome and produced positive achievements on patients and their environment.
Nightingale was a pioneer for hygiene and sanitation and has a vast impact on nursing today. She improved the nursing profession’s standards and enhanced the hospitals in which they worked. For example, she proposed sanitary improvements, safety, and cleanness inside hospitals and outside environs. Before Nightingale, there were no nursing training institutions or formal nursing education; hence nursing was learning through experience. As the ‘mother of nursing,’ she started the first nursing school in 1860. The institution offered the first official nursing training program in London. The legacy continued and may continue to be matrons at a major hospital and some even instituting their training courses, and the web grew and spread all over the world (Ellis 2020). The school was the root and foundation of nursing education. Apart from setting the first nursing school, Nightingale was also an author. In her book, Notes on Nursing, she outlined the principles of the nursing profession, advising on how illness can be adequately managed and how nurses, especially women, can care for their families. She emphasized correct diagnosis, good sanitation, nutrition, and proper treatment. Florence Nightingale has influenced, built a foundation, and shaped the current nursing using her hard work, dedication, and love for humanity.
References
Ellis, H. (2020). Florence Nightingale: creator of modern nursing and public health pioneer. Journal of Perioperative Practice, 30(5), 145-146.https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1750458919851942
Pattison, N., Deaton, C., McCabe, C., Coates, V., Johnston, B., Nolan, F., … & Briggs, M. (2022). Florence Nightingale’s legacy for clinical academics: A framework analysis of a clinical professorial network and a model for clinical academia. Journal of clinical nursing, 31(3-4), 353-361. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15756
Silva, R. N. D., & Ferreira, M. D. A. (2021). Nursing and society: Evolution of Nursing and of capitalism in the 200 years of Florence Nightingale. Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem, 29. https://doi.org/10.1590/1518-8345.4482.3425
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