Florence Nighingale
Lo! in that hour of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1857 poem "Santa Filomena"
Florence Nightingale more affectionately known as “The Lady with the Lamp” was the founder of educated and scientific nursing. She was born on May 12, 1820 (now celebrated as International Nurses Day) and died on August 13, 1910. In this long illustrious career she worked as a pioneer in nursing practices, as a writer and as a statistician.
Inspired by a Christian divine calling she decided to devote her life to nursing in 1845 despite family objections who felt that her place in society was to be a wife and a mother. She devoted her time to taking care of sick and indigent patients. Her most famous contribution came during the Crimean War when news came back to Britain about the poor treatment of sick British soldiers. She went to Crimea in 1854 and found wounded soldiers being badly cared for by overworked medical staff. Medicines were in short supply, hygiene was being neglected, and mass infections were common, many of them fatal. The death rate was the highest. Florence was a proponent of the Environmental theory of disease. She and her fellow nurses began thoroughly cleaning the hospital and equipment and re-organizing patient care. However, the death rate did not drop! On the contrary, it began to rise. Florence came back to Britain and championed for cleaner environmental conditions in Crimea. Due to her work, the British government sent a sanitary commission to Crimea which flushed out the sewers and increased ventilation in the hospital and the death rate started to drop. Florence is considered the first nursing theorist. One of her theories was the Environmental Theory, and is still practiced today. In her Notes on Nursing she states
"Nursing is an act of utilizing the environment of the patient to assist him in his recovery." It
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1857 poem "Santa Filomena"
Florence Nightingale more affectionately known as “The Lady with the Lamp” was the founder of educated and scientific nursing. She was born on May 12, 1820 (now celebrated as International Nurses Day) and died on August 13, 1910. In this long illustrious career she worked as a pioneer in nursing practices, as a writer and as a statistician.
Inspired by a Christian divine calling she decided to devote her life to nursing in 1845 despite family objections who felt that her place in society was to be a wife and a mother. She devoted her time to taking care of sick and indigent patients. Her most famous contribution came during the Crimean War when news came back to Britain about the poor treatment of sick British soldiers. She went to Crimea in 1854 and found wounded soldiers being badly cared for by overworked medical staff. Medicines were in short supply, hygiene was being neglected, and mass infections were common, many of them fatal. The death rate was the highest. Florence was a proponent of the Environmental theory of disease. She and her fellow nurses began thoroughly cleaning the hospital and equipment and re-organizing patient care. However, the death rate did not drop! On the contrary, it began to rise. Florence came back to Britain and championed for cleaner environmental conditions in Crimea. Due to her work, the British government sent a sanitary commission to Crimea which flushed out the sewers and increased ventilation in the hospital and the death rate started to drop. Florence is considered the first nursing theorist. One of her theories was the Environmental Theory, and is still practiced today. In her Notes on Nursing she states
"Nursing is an act of utilizing the environment of the patient to assist him in his recovery." It