Hospital reformer, born in Florence, NC Italy. Raised in England, she trained as a nurse at Kaiserswerth and Paris. During the Crimean War, after the Battle of Alma (1854), she led a party of 38 nurses to organize a nursing department at Scutari. There she found grossly inadequate sanitation, but soon established better conditions and had 10 000 wounded under her care. She returned to England in 1856, where she formed an institution for the training of nurses at St Thomas' Hospital, and spent several years on army sanitary reform, the improvement of nursing, and public health in India.
| Florence Nightingale | |
|---|---|
| Born |
12 May 1820 Florence, Italy |
| Died |
13 August 1910 London, England |
Florence Nightingale, OM (12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910), who came to be known as The Lady with the Lamp, was a pioneer of modern nursing, and a noted statistician.
Early life
Florence Nightingale was born into a wealthy, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia in Florence, Italy. Her parents were William Edward Nightingale (1794–1874) and Frances Nightingale née Smith (1789–1880).
Inspired by what she understood to be a divine calling, experienced first in 1837 at Embley Park and later throughout her life, Nightingale made a commitment to nursing. In those days, nursing was a career with a poor reputation, filled mostly by poorer women, "hangers-on" who followed the armies, and nurses were equally likely to function as cooks. Nightingale announced her decision to enter nursing in 1845, evoking intense anger and distress from her family, particularly her mother.
Nightingale was particularly concerned with the appalling conditions of medical care for poor and indigent people.
In 1846 she visited Kaiserswerth, Germany, and learned more of its pioneering hospital established by Theodor Fliedner and managed by an order of Lutheran deaconesses.
Nightingale was courted by politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, but she rejected him, convinced that marriage would interfere with her ability to follow her calling to nursing. Herbert was already married, but he and Nightingale were immediately attracted to each other and they became life-long close friends.
Nightingale also had strong and intimate relations with Benjamin Jowett, particularly about the time that she was considering leaving money in her will to establish a Chair in Applied Statistics at the University of Oxford.
Nightingale's career in nursing began in earnest in 1851 when she received four months' training in Germany as a deaconess of Kaiserswerth.
On August 12, 1853, Nightingale took a post of superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Upper Harley Street, London, a position she held until October 1854.
Crimean War
Florence Nightingale's most famous contribution came during the Crimean War, which became her central focus when reports began to filter back to Britain about the horrific conditions for the wounded. On October 21, 1854, she and a staff of 38 women volunteer nurses, trained by Nightingale and including her aunt Mai Smith, were sent (under the authorization of Sidney Herbert) to Turkey, some 545 km across the Black Sea from Balaklava in the Crimea, where the main British camp was based.
Nightingale arrived early in November 1854 in Scutari (modern-day Üsküdar in Istanbul).
Nightingale and her compatriots began by thoroughly cleaning the hospital and equipment and reorganizing patient care. A sanitary commission had to be sent out by the British government to Scutari in March 1855, almost six months after Florence Nightingale had arrived, which flushed out the sewers and improved ventilation.
Nightingale continued believing the death rates were due to poor nutrition and supplies and overworking of the soldiers.
Return home
Florence Nightingale returned to Britain a heroine on August 7, 1857, and, according to the BBC, was arguably the most famous Victorian after Queen Victoria herself. Nightingale moved from her family home in Middle Claydon, Buckinghamshire to the Burlington Hotel in Piccadilly.
In response to an invitation from Queen Victoria – and despite the limitations of confinement to her room – Nightingale played the central role in the establishment of the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army, of which Sidney Herbert became chairman. As a woman, Nightingale could not be appointed to the Royal Commission, but she wrote the Commission's 1,000-plus page report that included detailed statistical reports, and she was instrumental in the implementation of its recommendations.
Later career
While she was still in Turkey, on November 29, 1855, a public meeting to give recognition to Florence Nightingale for her work in the war led to the establishment of the Nightingale Fund for the training of nurses. Nightingale was also considered a pioneer in the concept of medical tourism as well based on her letters from 1856 in which she would write to spas in Turkey detailing the health conditions, physical descriptions, dietary information, and other vitally important details of patients whom she directed there (which was significantly less expensive than Switzerland).
By 1859 Nightingale had £45,000 at her disposal from the Nightingale Fund to set up the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas' Hospital on July 9, 1860. (It is now called the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery and is part of King's College London.) The first trained Nightingale nurses began work on May 16 at the Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary.
Nightingale wrote Notes on Nursing, which was published in 1860, a slim 136 page book that served as the cornerstone of the curriculum at the Nightingale School and other nursing schools established. Nightingale would spend the rest of her life promoting the establishment and development of the nursing profession and organizing it into its modern form.
During her bedridden years, she also made pioneering work in the field of hospital planning, and her work propagated quickly across England and the world.
Nightingale's work served as an inspiration for nurses in the American Civil War.
In 1869 Nightingale and Elizabeth Blackwell opened the Women's Medical College.
By 1882 Nightingale nurses had a growing and influential presence in the embryonic nursing profession.
In 1883 Nightingale was awarded the Royal Red Cross by Queen Victoria.
By 1896 Florence Nightingale was bedridden.
Contributions to statistics
Florence Nightingale had exhibited a gift for mathematics from an early age and excelled in the subject under the tutorship of her father.
During the Crimean War, Nightingale invented a diagram she called the coxcomb or polar area chart, equivalent to a modern circular histogram or rose diagram, to illustrate seasonal sources of patient mortality in the military field hospital she managed.
In her later life Nightingale made a comprehensive statistical study of sanitation in Indian rural life and was the leading figure in the introduction of improved medical care and public health service in India. In 1858 Nightingale was elected the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society and she later became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.
Legacy and memory
Florence Nightingale's lasting contribution has been her role in founding the nursing profession.
In many ways she was extremely "modern" in her attitude to health management, especially in her attitude to outcomes and statistical measurement.
The work of the Nightingale School of Nursing continues today. There is a Florence Nightingale Museum in London and another museum devoted to her at her family home, Claydon House.
Several churches in the Anglican Communion commemorate Nightingale with a feast day on their liturgical calendars.
The airline KLM has named one of their MD-11s in her memory.
Three hospitals in Istanbul are named after Nightingale: F.
During the Vietnam War, Nightingale inspired many US Army nurses, sparking a renewal of interest in her life and work.
The Agostino Gemelli Medical Centre in Rome, the first university-based hospital in Italy and one of its most respected medical centres, honoured Nightingale's contribution to the nursing profession by giving the name "Bedside Florence" to a wireless computer system it has developed to assist nursing.
Nightingale Corona, on the surface of Venus is named after her.
There are many foundations named after Florence Nightingale. Most are nursing foundations, but there is also Nightingale Research Foundation in Canada, dedicated to the study and treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome which Nightingale is believed to have had.
The United States Air Force maintains a fleet of 20 McDonnell Douglas C-9A "Nightingale" aeromedical evacuation aircraft.
Trivia
When she first arrived in Turkey, Nightingale would travel on horseback to make inspections.
The carriage was returned to England after the war and subsequently given to the Nightingale training school for nurses, which she founded at St Thomas's Hospital. Matthew, "Nightingale, Florence (1820–1910)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004;
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