Nightingale, Florence

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) was responsible for professionalizing nursing. She also was a sanitarian, a hospital administrator, and an early biostatistician. Born in Florence, Italy, in 1820, to a wealthy British couple, Nightingale grew up in England. She became well educated for a woman of those times. As a young woman, Nightingale had a calling from God asking her to do His work, though she did not discover His plan until years later. As a result of her interest in then current social issues, she began to visit the homes of the sick in villages near her home. While a woman of means would never become a nurse, on a tour in Europe, she visited a Prussian hospital and school [Page 850]for deaconesses in 1846. She later returned to train as a nurse, subsequently becoming, in 1853, the unpaid superintendent of a London establishment for sick gentlewomen.

The Crimean War broke out in 1854; reports criticizing the British medical facilities for the wounded resulted in her appointment to officially introduce female nurses into the military hospitals in Turkey. Although the physicians did not initially welcome her and her nurses, the women's skills were quickly appreciated. Nightingale's actions improved both the sanitary and emotional status of the wounded soldiers. Under her administration, the mortality rate of patients in the hospital decreased significantly. Her rule that she should be the only nurse in the wards at night earned her the title of the “Lady With the Lamp.” Nightingale performed statistical analyses of disease and mortality. She ultimately became the general superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment of the Military Hospitals of the Army.

Nightingale returned from the Crimean War in August 1856, soon participating in the creation of the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army. She contributed information in the form of her Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army, Founded Chiefly on the Experience of the Late War. Presented by Request to the Secretary of State for War.

Nightingale was committed to the use of statistics, which she employed to support her ideas on healthcare and public health. She worked with the British statistician William Farr. As a result of her statistical accomplishments, she became the first woman to be elected as a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, in 1858.

Perhaps Nightingale's greatest achievement is her elevation of the status of nursing: It became a respectable profession for women. In 1860, she established a nursing school at London's St. Thomas' Hospital. Nurses, trained in her program, worked in staff hospitals throughout Britain and abroad, establishing nursing training schools using her model.

Nightingale was an advocate of the pavilion style of hospitals: completely detached pavilions, separating medical pathologies, to prevent the spread of diseases. Her Notes on Nursing was first published in 1860; its latest printing was in 1992. She campaigned to improve health standards, writing extensively on the subject. Queen Victoria awarded her the Royal Red Cross in 1883. Nightingale became the first woman to receive the Order of Merit in 1907. She died at the age of 90 in 1910.

...