Florence Nightingale
The dominant figure in the development of organized nursing is Florence Nightingale. At the time she made her mark in history, society was generally one in which hospitals seemed amenable to a new profession and there was a realization that the Protestant orders needed some organization similiar to Catholic nursing orders with more freedom in various ways.
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| Florence Nightingale (lerningforlife.org.uk) |
The training and organization of lay Protestant nurse began before Florence Nightingale made her contribution to nursing, but with her power ful personality, her vision, and her practical organizing ability she took the lead in the movement, placed it on a powerful foundation of organization on sound educational principles and high ethics, and inspired it with an enthusiasm that gave to it an impetus under which it is still progressing. A few years before Miss Nigthingale`s time there was no professional nursing. At the time of her death nursing was a profession, formely unthinkable.
However, Florence Nightingale devoted only a part of her life to the advancement of nursing; she also contributed to reforms in the Army, and improved sanitation in India and public health in Great Britain. Her full stature cannot be comprehended unless attention is given also to the following accomplishments.
Early Life and Education
Early Life and Education
Born in 1820 to Mr and Mrs William Edward Nigthingale, Florence was their second daughter and named after the Italian city in which the family then lived. Having consierable wealth, Florence was brought up with good social standing, culture, and the best education available to children of that era. She learned French, German, and Italian and her father personally instructed her in mathematics and the classics.
The Nightingale`s permanent home was England, but they traveled extensively. Florence thrived on the many acquaintances and experiences she had as she traveled through France, Italy, and Switzerland. She was expected to enter society when she returned to England but she had expectations of a more satisfying life. Knowing societal attitudes about nursing, her parents discouraged her interest in pursuing such a career. Nevertheless, she persevered and planned to become a nurse at Salisbury Hospital not far from her home.
In 1844, Ms Nightingale met the American philanthropist, Samuel Gridley Howe, and his wife, Julia Ward Howe, who later authored “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The lowes stayed at the Nightingale family home and impressed Ms Nightingale with an institution for the blind that Dr Howe had founded in New York. In this facility he planned to make medical and nursing care available without payment to elderly and ill American citizens. At this time Florence explored the possibility of working in English woman could expect to pursue such a vocation unless she were to enter the church and Florence`s family refused to discuss the matter further.
Until 1845, Florence Nightingale believed that qualifications such as tenderness, sympathy, goodness, and patience were all that a nurse required. After experience in caring for some members of her family during their illnesses, she recognized that knowledge and skill were also necessary and that acquisition of these required education and training.
After a busy “social summer,” Florence returned home to visit close friends of the family. This accomplished a dual purpose : (1) she explored life in a Catholic convent in preparation for nursing (she was not converted to Chatolicism althrough she remained deeply religious throughout her life; by tradition she remained within the Curch of England) and (2) she met Mr and Mrs Sidney Herbert through whom she was to go to the Crimea. The Herberts were deeply interested in hospital reform and public opinion was shifting sufficiently to be accepting of Ms Nightingale`s expertise regarding hospital reform, a subject which she had collected data about for a long time.
By the age of 28, Ms Nightingale was expected to marry but that did not happen. She contined to travel as opportunities presented themselves, and wherever she went she studied intenly what she saw. After a trip to Greece and Egypt she learned about the institution at Kaiserwerth. Through some friends she received the Yearbook of the Institution of Deaconnesses at Kaiserwerth in 1846. She studied it carefully and realized that here she could receive the training she wanted. Because the institution was under religious auspices and the character of the deaconnesses and pastors beyond reproach, she could go there without the stigma attached to the English hospitals.
Experience at Kaiserwerth
The one of her journeys Florence paid a visit to Kaiserwerth. She followed the visit with the writing of a 32-page pamphlet called the Institute of Kaiserwerth on the Rhine for the Practical Training of Deaconesses Under the Direction of the Reverend Pastor Flieduer, Embracing the Support and Care of a Hospital, Infant and Industrial Schools, and a Female Penitentiary. She was impressed with the organization and high purpose of Kaiserwerth but not with the training of nurses.
She assumed several adminitrative jobs and each time she went back to the task of visiting hospitals and collecting data for reforming conditions for nurses. In the middle of the nineteenth century, social reform was increasingly popular, and people such as the Herberts and their friends became interested in the reform required the organization of some type of school for the training of reliable qualified nurses. She saw the need for a new type of nurse. One of the administration jobs that Ms Nightingale hat was superintendent of nurses at King`s College Hospital, thanks to Mr. Bowinan, a well-known surgeon.
The Crimean War
The Crimean war won Ms Nightingale the title of Lady with the Lamp. The British, French, and Turks were fighting the Russians, chiefly near the Black Sea and the Crimean Peninsula. There were serious problems with the handling of sick and wounded soldiers, especially by the British. There was need for a leader to organize an all out effort to save lives of the wounded and sick. Thirty eight nurses were recruited, some of them Roman Catholic sisters, and conditions under which these nurses worked were atrocious. Even the simplest means of healthy living were absent.
At first Ms Nightingale and the nurses did not have the respect and confidence of the physicians but this required time evidence of what the nurses could do. Florence insisted the the nurses not give help unless they were asked. When large numbers of casualties were present, the nurses were asked for assistance by the physicians. The result was the establishment of a hospital from what had been shambles and by the end of the war there were 125 nurses.
Nursing staff was expected to cooperate and not take cange. A nurse took orders from physicians only. Florence divided her time between administration and personal attention to patients. Her nightly rounds when the day`s work supposedly was done are famous. It was during her nightly rounds with her lantern that she made her tour of inspection past the long lines of corts, with a friendly word to some, a smile for others. In all she inspired a feeling of comfort that someone was sympathizing with the patients and striving to make their hard lot a little easier. Of all her activities in Scutari, these nightly rounds are perhaps the most famous; they have been immortalized by Longfellow in his poem The Lady With the Lamp.
In addition to being a nurse, Ms Nightingale was social worker. She was concerned with recreational facilities for soldiers and their families and even developed a type of savings bank through which the soldiers might transmit money to relatives in England. Toward the end of the war she became ill with Crimean fever (typhoid or typhus) from which she never fully recovered.
At the end of the Crimean War, two figures were prominent: the common British soldier and the nurse. At the beginning of the war most British soldiers were the drunken immoral dregs of society, and the status of women in nursing was not much better. Ms Nightingale`s work in the Crimea did much to set the pattern for improvement of conditions for these two groups.
Reference :
Grace L. Deloughery, 1991, Issues and Trends in Nursing, Mosby Year Book, St. Louis, Missouri.
