Florence Nightingale : An Immense Impact On Nursing

Nursing has developed as a scientific discipline and is starting to emerge into professional status. Florence Nightingale, also known as the “Lady with the Lamp” was the first female nurse. Although Florence had went through quantities of conflict, she still managed to change the profession of nursing forever.

Nursing has evolved as a scientific discipline and is starting to emerge into professional status. One of the great leaders in nursing who helped this change take place was Florence Nightingale. Nightingale is considered as a pioneer in the nursing profession. She has contributed a lot in the field of nursing and her works are considered as assets, and will be remembered for many years.

Florence Nightingale is often commonly believed by many to be a significant person who not only improved nursing, but the Army and medical education as well. Born in 1820 to a wealthy family she was allowed the opportunity to become educated to a higher degree and obtaining extensive knowledge in statistics and math, which later allowed her to revolutionize nursing, as well as establish nursing as an actual profession. Hospitals during this time were unclean, disorderly, and an incredibly infectious environment for patients. Hospitals were not considered places of healing, but places where people died, and therefore a place many people avoided. It was for this reason that Florence Nightingale’s parents advised her not to enter this profession.

One of the most unrevealed facts about Florence nightingale is that she encountered several obstacles during her nursing career. The medical profession was not supportive of her holistic approach to healing. During the Crimean war, many soldiers were dying of preventable diseases due to poor sanitations and inhuman condition. She proposes way to improve the survival rate of the wounded soldiers. But she encountered resistance in the military. According to Simkin, J., (2014) many members of the military and doctors objected to her ideology to revitalize the medical setting for the hospitalized soldiers.

In the 1850’s, a woman named Florence Nightingale not only reformed nursing as it existed in that time, but also laid the foundation for the profession (Egenes, 2009). Nightingale had become horrified at the death tolls and number of sick British soldiers reported for the Crimean War. Florence used her political influence to obtain permission for her and a group of women to travel, in order to provide care for the soldiers. Upon arrival, the band of nurses used Ms. Nightingale’s knowledge of nursing to sanitize and surgically prep not only the hospital but also the

Florence Nightingale is one of the most influential and renowned person in nursing due to her contribution to the practice of what nursing is today from her theories, literatures, schools, etc. resulting for her to be called “the mother of modern nursing”. The book to be reviewed in this paper is by Reef (2017) entitled Florence Nightingale: The courageous life of the legendary nurse. The author of this paper with her background as a nurse knows how big Nightingale’s impact was for nursing and hopes she could be an influential leader in this field as well. Because of the curiosity of what Nightingale’s real history was, what are the works and accomplishments she has done, and what lead her to be one of the great leaders in nursing opted for the selection of this book. As the title of the book implies, the life of Florence Nightingale was narrated in this book from her birth to death. It included her love and passion for nursing, as well as, the struggles and achievements she has encountered and done to be a successful nurse and leader in this field. This paper will explore how Nightingale adopted leadership as a vocation; theoretical framework, style, leadership traits she practiced will also be examined; together with the qualities she emulated to inspire followership; and shortcomings of her leadership approach that the author of this paper will try to overcome.

The first nursing research was done by Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War where she collected data on mortality rates in the hospital where she worked (Parahoo, 2014). Some authors such as Polit and Beck ( 2017, pg 4 ) also add that Florence Nightingale´s research contributed not only to the awakening of nursing research but the beginning of modern nursing. Contemporary nursing entails compassionated patient-centred care, critical thinking and the ability of questioning practice constantly, looking for evidence to enhance performance that will improve patient outcomes (Willis Commission 2012). To support this, research plays a pivotal role in nursing practice by being one of the main tools available to question nursing practice and an aid to seek answers and ensure practice improvement ( Parahoo, 2014). In this changing context of care nursing practice needs to seek better ways to help people ( Jolley, 2013 ); it needs to conduct research to establish the effectiveness of its practice. Besides,The Nursing and Midwifery Council ( NMC ) in the Code ( NMC, 2015 ) adds that nurses must provide high standards of practice and care at all times by using the best available evidence ( NMC, 2015 ).

Between 1500 and 1860, it was considered the dark period of nursing. Nurses, at this time, was a role of servitude as menial, low-status work. Most women who filled these roles were illiterate, rough, inconsiderate, and often immoral and alcoholics (Master, 2014). It wasn’t until a woman named Florence Nightingale to come in a change the entire nursing world. Nightingale was born to a wealthy family and was not supported by her family when she pursued nursing. In 1852, Nightingale took her future into her own hands and moved to Kaiserwerth for her studies (Masters, 2014). From here, Nightingale was offered the position of female nursing establishment of the English General Hospitals in Turkey. When Nightingale sailed over seas to camps set up for wounded solider, she brought medical equipment, set up kitchens, recreation rooms, and reading rooms (Masters, 2014). More importantly, she provided humane health care. Years later, Nightingale used St. Thomas as her beginning of professional nursing school (Masters, 2014). Nightingale had high standards on who is accepted and who becomes a nurse. Students who were picked had to be of good moral character, sober, and honest with no possible ties to disgraceful associations of past nurses

“Florence Nightingale established nursing as a respected profession and invented the hospital as we know it today” (Tye, 2015). She was a leader in the field of nursing. A role similar to Florence Nightingale would be that of a Nurse Manager; an amalgamation of a compassionate caregiver and one who has an eye on quality and efficiency.

When looking back on the history of nursing, Florence Nightingale was very symbolic. She became the mother of modern nursing in 1854 after the Crimean War had begun (Kesler, 2012). She led a group of volunteers, mostly women, to help aid soldiers. The air was not fresh, there was not any proper food, and the sanitation was poor, because of this modernizing nursing and military nursing in particular became one of Nightingale’s main priorities (Kesler, 2012). Nightingale stood out because she was well educated and dedicated to conveying her message to Great Britain’s government (Kesler, 2012). She also influenced the United States in a major way. Nurses who volunteered for the Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War adopted many of her concepts and methods; during the Civil War there were over 5,000 nurses who served (Kesler, 2012). During this time, some nurses were given honorary military ranking, but they were still only considered as civilians who volunteered. Also, during the same time period, Dorothea Dix was applauded on her attempt to defend the humane treatment of the mentally ill patients (Kesler, 2012). She became the first Superintendent of Union Army. One of the highlights of her lifetime was her proposal that all soldiers from both sides of the conflicts should get the same

May 12, 1820 marked the beginning of a revolutionary and exciting era of nursing characterized by the birth of Florence Nightingale, a pioneer of the modern nursing profession for her work as a nurse, educator, researcher, and an environmentalist in the nursing profession (Alligood, 2014). Nightingale developed a number of nursing theories regarding the environment and effective care for patients and refined her theories to focus on the health of houses, personal hygiene, and petty management (Alligood, 2014). These canons were crucial in the creation of a nursing era focused on health promotion and disease prevention. One preventable disease from Nightingale’s time that is still prevalent today is cholera. Cholera is a condition characterized by diarrhea, vomiting, and leg cramps, resulting in severe dehydration or death due to the bacteria, vibro cholerae (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). Cholera is spread through consumption of water or food that has been contaminated with fecal bacteria, and as such is preventable through education programs, improved access to clean water, and proper personal hygiene (World Health Organization, 2016). Médecins Sans Frontières uses these measures, in addition to the administration of oral vaccines, to prevent Cholera in South Sudanese refugees. The Médecins Sans Frontières cholera prevention program relies on Florence Nightingale’s nursing theories of health of houses, personal hygiene, and petty management as the basis

Nursing today has become such an intricate world of healing, caring, knowledge and advocacy. All of these qualities are within every nurse. Nursing today is what it is due to many nursing theorist that came with a new set of knowledge and idea that helped shape nursing to what it is considered. One such theorist was nursing’s first environmental theorist, Florence Nightingale. According to Black and Chitty (2014), Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 to a prosperous English household. Her father educated her in many subjects such as: Latin, German, Greek, History and even Mathematics. Florence excelled in academics and wanted to further her studies by going to Kaiserswerth, Germany to study nursing. This was a huge deal in the era Nightingale lived in due to the fact that nursing was a working class job and Nightingale was from a wealthy family. According to MacQueen, (2007), nursing in that era was considered to be a job for the poor, involving untrained individuals and many were often accused of immoral behaviors. During the Crimean War, due to the horrendous war camp hospitals, Florence Nightingale was asked to gather nurses and head over to Scutari to help out at the British camp. With Nightingale’s charge, the camps conditions changed and the nurses brought cleanliness, comfort and sanitation to the patients. Nightingale made her mark as being known as the “Lady with the Lamp.” With the lessons learned during the Crimean War, Nightingale wrote an article describing in

Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC was a celebrated English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. She once said, “Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.” This is an interesting concept still today. Education has helped several people to transform their lives, their situations, and their beliefs. As the founder of nursing, Florence Nightingale attributed her success to never giving or taking any excuse. I believe this very same principle applies to me as well. I try very hard not to give or take excuses for the things that have happened in my past. I only owe my transformation to the education I received.

Nightingale was history’s first and most effective advocate for the healthcare rights of soldiers and veterans; and of course she was the guiding light for the first professional school of nursing. Her book Notes on Nursing was the first manifesto for patient-centered care, and her book Notes on Hospitals influenced hospital design well into this

Florence Nightingale pioneered nursing during the 19th and 20th centuries. She began her work by improving sanitation in military hospitals and then established the standard form of nursing. Florence Nightingale embodied the qualities of the Grad at Grad document through her strong work ethic, promotion of justice, and her ability to gain trust that facilitated the development of leadership.