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The Leadership and Legacy of Florence Nightingale

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The Leadership and Legacy of Florence Nightingale Pamela Passmore Theoretical Foundations of Nursing Roles and Practice/510 01/11/2015 Dolores Diehl The Leadership and Legacy of Florence Nightingale 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. Before discussing the effects of Florence's influence, examining the existence …show more content…

Nurses' actions should be deliberative, rather than automatic” (Nursing Theorists, 2011). Upon Florence's return from the Crimean war, she had developed the foundation for what is known today as evidenced based practice (EBP). This theory reflected her ideals of health care and nursing practice. Florence was determined that the senseless deaths from poor standards of care she witnessed during the Crimean war should never occur again. She called on the Royal Commission to investigate the causative factors for the high number of deaths. Florence worked closely with a team of experts and set out to examine the causative factors. Florence had a "philosophy that favored a systemic approach…for Nightingale, this entailed the best possible research, access to the best available government statistics and expertise, and the collection of new material where the existing stock was low. Nightingale's leadership style was very much knowledge based" (McDonald, 2001, p. 68). Over the past two decades, EBP has expanded on Florence's theories. EBP constitutes the combination of clinical expertise, patient values, and research evidence when making decisions about patient care. In the 1990's, it was determined that just increasing knowledge was not sufficient for improving patient outcomes. To obtain better patient outcomes "new knowledge must be transformed into clinically useful forms, effectively implemented across the entire care team within a systems context,

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