Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 into a wealthy family (Florence, 2004) and aspired to become a nurse from an early age. Best known as the founder of modern nursing, Nightingale also contributed to society as an established statistician. According to Florence (2004), Nightingale joined the Crimean war in 1855, offering her skills as a nurse to the sick and wounded soldiers. The conditions were so abysmal; it fueled her internal passion for helping others and finding a way to create healthier hospital conditions suitable for nurses and patients. This paper analyzes two resources describing Nightingales contributions to statistics and how it molded the person she is remembered for.
The Open University (2011) explains during the Crimean War, Nightingale collected detailed data about the mortality rates of soldiers over a two year time period. After the war, Nightingale convinced the Queen Victoria to finance a report that was later published as the Polar Area Graph or coxcomb. This clearly depicted graphic identified month to month representation of soldiers who died from preventable disease, those who died from the war related causalities, and those who died from accidents (The Open University, 2011). With the introduction of color and shapes in the published visual aid, Nightingale’s research conclusions were so well represented, even a novice person would be able to understand that soldiers were dying more so from complications of poor healthcare practices
According to Provision seven the attitudes of Deborah and the other nurses on the unit do not advance the nursing profession. Nursing from the beginning of its existence with Florence Nightingale has fought to be considered not only an art but also a science. Scientific research was one of the governing factors of Nightingale’s principles of nursing. She used statistical data to help her keep records of success and failure rates of her nursing interventions. The use of this scientific research proved to be beneficial because it gave substantial scientific evidence that her nursing interventions significantly decreased mortality rates during the Crimean War. The support of her statistical data enabled nightingale to prove to her colleagues and peers that the art of nursing plays a significant role in patient outcome and mortality. This relates to the nurses in the NICU, because since the beginning of nursing evidence based practice has been implemented and deemed useful. For one to denounce future practice of evidence based practice in contemporary nursing will further remove nursing from its professional status. Nursing is one
Florence Nightingale was the founder for nursing. Even though Nightingale’s family was against the career of nursing, she pursued her passion of learning to care for the ill. She strived to help the people sick and in need. Nightingale showed her caring heart when she helped cure soldiers during the Crimean War. She showed her compassion as she helped the wounded soldiers from the battlefield. Over time, Nightingale noticed the unsanitary conditions at the base hospital. Since the conditions were extremely unsanitary, Nightingale recorded the mortality rate of the soldiers. According to her data, the soldiers hospitalized were seven times more likely to pass away from unsanitary environments rather than injuries from the
Nightingale, F. (1860).Notes on nursing: what it is and what it is not. New York:D.Appleton And Company.
Florence Nightingale is known as the founder of modern nursing. Her contributions and influence not only to the nursing profession, but to the public health care system, is unparalleled. She was instrumental in establishing multiple processes and practices that are still in current practice. She has influenced many nursing theorist and prevailing theories during her career. Many of her changes continue to influence theory development today.
Florence went against her parents wishes of getting married and starting a family; she wanted to leave an impact on the world. She did just that by wanting to improve the profession of nursing and formed the framework for centuries to come. Florence Nightingale has been quoted with saying “every woman is a nurse”(Malka,2007). She believed nursing was a calling for women and that idea later turned nursing into the respectful and trustworthy that we know of today. The impact she left behind is greater than she could ever imagine.
Florence Nightingale was an immense impact on nursing, who “became famous for her revolutionary work as a nurse during the Crimean War” (Kent 30). “She dedicated her life to improving conditions in hospitals, beginning in an army hospital during the Crimean War,” (3 Registered). Her actions were then used by “concerned individuals, rather than by professionally trained nurses” during the Civil War, (Registered 279). Many of Nightingale’s ideas were brought into modern times, but with the improvement of technology and licensed nurses. With the influence and patience of Florence Nightingale, nursing has evolved into an outstanding career.
“In these conditions, it was not surprising that in army hospitals, war wounds only accounted for one death in six. Diseases such as typhus, cholera, and dysentery were the main reasons why the death rate was so high amongst wounded soldiers” (Spartacus, 2011, ¶ 10). Nightingale went on to establish sanitary guidelines to improve nursing quality, statistical ways of obtaining data, and most importantly environmental factors to improve patient quality. What we know of Florence Nightingale is that although she was born into a wealthy family, she had a different drive in her life towards helping other humans. Nightingale demonstrated pure altruism, but why? What constitutes for her behaviors and traits, there must be a key to unlocking the personality development of Florence Nightingale.
Imagine a room in a hospital; you are lying on a bed, with linens since your admission, the room is very cold and dark at the same time, without proper ventilation. The bathroom you have does not have proper drainage; outside environment is as noisy as having a construction site as a neighbor. Health care providers come in just for the job and merely not care about you; their hands are not even clean and washed. Imagine these kinds of situation, what kind of environment are you having? Do you a place to heal or a place to die? Since the beginning of Modern Nursing, these scenes are commonly practiced and are usual in a way that it is considered a normal place to rest and be taken care of.
Florence Nightingale a systemic thinker and a “passionate statistician” (McDonald, 2001). According to McDonald (2001) Nightingales work in nursing and social reform was informed by religious faith or philosophy that favored a systemic approach. The goal of nursing has remained unchanged, since the time of Nightingales model, nursing is to provide a safe and caring environment that promotes patient health and well-being.
The ability to care for the underprivileged is a choice some nurses may not embrace due to the challenges involved. A NP working in rural, low socioeconomic areas requires a service with selflessness. Florence Nightingale served the lives of countless soldiers when she transformed battlefield nursing care during the Crimean war. In 1842, she developed public health nursing for the sick and poor at home and created a health care reform (Monteiro, 1985).
Florence Nightingale was an English nurse whose efforts in the Crimean wars saved a lot of lives. She was a revered for her role in professionalizing the profession leading to many of the standards of nursing we know today (Gill & Gill, 2005). During the Crimean War, she led a team of nurses and it was the level of professionalism exhibited by her and her team that led to her fame. What was unique about her team is that she had personally trained most of them. Along with being a medical revolutionary she was also a firm feminist, she campaigned for more civil liberties for women. One of her main accomplishments as a feminist was the abolishment of laws that were too harsh on women especially
With her families’ approval, Florence became the superintendent of a nursing home in Harley Street. The break out of the Crimean War and the Battle of Alma, led to the complete breakdown of medical arrangements in the hospitals in Scutari. Due to some luck and good timing Florence had the opportunity, along with 37 other nurses, to travel to Scutari and assist in the hospitals. In 1855, by the end of her stay in Scutari, she had completely transformed the system in which the hospitals ran (Strachey, 114). By reorganizing the food, laundry, clothing systems, changing the overall hygiene and ventilation of the hospitals and fixing administrative issues, the hospitals now ran smoothly and mortality was down from 42% to 22% (Strachey, 120).
Have you ever wondered who those people where who helped make you all better? You might remember them wearing scrubs. They play a huge role in the hospital! Those people are called Registered Nurses. They are like heroes in scrubs. RNs provide and coordinate patient care, educate patients and the public about many different health conditions, and provide advice and emotional support to patients and their family members. Registered Nurses also record patients’ medical history and symptoms, give patients medication and treatments, they observe patients and record their observations, talk with doctors and other healthcare people. They operate and monitor medical equipment, help perform diagnostic tests and analyze results. When the patients
Known as, “the Lady with the Lamp,” and “the Mother of Modern Nursing,” Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820 (National Women 's History Museum, n.d.). She was the youngest of two children born to William and Frances Nightingale (National Women 's History Museum, n.d.). Florence’s family was very wealthy and were members of the social elite (UAB - Reynolds-Finley Historical Library, n.d.). Florence received her education from her father and she developed an interest in mathematics and medicine (National Women 's History Museum, n.d.). At sixteen, Florence believed that it was her “divine calling” to become a nurse (UAB - Reynolds-Finley Historical Library, n.d.). Florence’s parents did not support her decision to become a nurse because at that time, women of Florence’s social class were expected to marry a wealthy man and raise a family (UAB - Reynolds-Finley Historical Library, n.d.). Also, nursing had a bad reputation and was considered a job for poor women (UAB - Reynolds-Finley Historical Library, n.d.). However, her parent’s disapproval did not stop Florence from pursing her call to nursing.
Florence Nightingale deserved to be the mother of modern nursing. She saved the reputation of nursing through significant contribution of nurses in the Crimean War. Before, nurses were considered as an unrespectable work where nurses were the “drunken, immoral women, the dregs of society” (Houlihan 1). A person who may rather steal than heal. When she arrived in Istanbul on September 4, 1854, along with thirty-eight white, middle-class female nurses and twenty-eight nuns, she focused on sanitation of the sick ward. They brought the morbidities from 60% to 1%. Through this, Nightingale shows the necessity of nurses in saving lives. She also shows that nurses and women can be statistician too. In fact, she was the first female member of the Statistical Society. She used the data from Crimean War to shows why mortality rate in Crimean was so high. Her contribution marked the beginning of nursing as a profession.