Florence Nightingale Research Paper

The Nightingale Theory of Nursing

Florence Nightingale’s theory of nursing highlights the role of a patient’s environment as an important factor for healing and continued good health. Her philosophy includes several characteristics of a healthy, healing environment, such as: proper lighting, air and water quality, diet and nutrition, and cleanliness. Ms. Nightingale was from an affluent British family and as such was expected to live a proper British aristocratic lifestyle, which of course included marrying a proper man and raising several proper children, hopefully boys. Rather than pursue this proper life she chose at age twenty-five to devote her life to nursing, considered a menial trade in those days, engaged in only by poor spinsters, widows, or the unwed poor. Her family was needless to say appalled that their well bred daughter would choose such life.
Florence persevered, and became one of the most influential women of her time, revolutionizing nursing and medicine in general.
Her privileged upbringing afforded her certain advantages in the development of her theory of nursing, especially her advanced knowledge of mathematics and statistics. Her fluent understanding of five languages could not have hurt either. She studied nursing at the Kaiserworth School in Germany and served as superintendent of the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Upper Harley Street, London. In 1854, however, came Nightingale’s true time to shine. The Crimean War offered her the opportunity to care for British soldiers in Turkey. She took a group of twenty nurses to the hospital there and sometimes worked twenty-four hour days. It was here that she came to be known as the Lady of the Lamp, because she could be seen walking the hospital at all hours, with a lamp to light her way, caring for her
patients. When Nightingale arrived in Turkey, in 1854, she and her nurses found soldiers being cared for in the most deplorable of conditions. There wasn’t enough medicine, hygiene was non-existent, and infections were widespread and many were fatal, and there was no equipment for the making of food for the patients. Ten times more troops died of diseases such as typhus, typhoid fever, cholera, and dysentery than from wounds incurred in battle. The death toll at the temporary barracks where Nightingale was stationed was so high because of defective sewers, lack of ventilation and overcrowding, overworked medical staff and bureaucratic indifference. At Nightingale’s urging a Sanitary Commission was sent to the hospital to flush out the sewers and improve ventilation. Florence’s linking of sanitary conditions and decreased death rates was a revolution in medical care. The mortality rate at Florence’s hospital dropped from forty-two percent to two percent in the first six months of her time there. She further insisted on proper lighting, diet, hygiene and activity. Florence collected the data from her experience in the Crimean War upon her return to England and saw then the direct link between poor living conditions and mortality. Nightingale’s environmental theory includes the need for: direct sunlight, fresh air, pure water, sufficient food, efficient drainage, and cleanliness. Any deficiency in one or more of these areas can lead to impaired functioning of life processes or diminished health status. She also advocated a quiet and warm environment and attendance of the patient’s dietary needs by documentation of intake and evaluation of the effects of food on the patient. Florence published Notes on Nursing, in 1860; it is the first book ever of its kind. She did not intend it to be a nursing text, but rather as a guide to the manipulation of a person’s environment as a means to heal and be healthy. Her intention was to teach women to teach themselves to nurse. It has already been stated that Nightingale’s major focus is on maintaining a healthy, therapeutic environment, providing the optimum conditions for a patient to be able to heal him or herself. There are three types of environments: physical, psychological and social. The physical environment is a collection of the previously mentioned maintenance of adequate light, food, cleanliness, clean air and water. The psychological requires various activities to keep the mind occupied and communication with the patient, about the patient and about other people to provide adequate care. The social environment involves the collection of data about disease and prevention, the maintenance of adequate physical environment in the home, hospitals and the total community. There is one major problem with the use of the Nightingale Theory in modern nursing and it exists simply because of the changes in nursing practice in the hundred and fifty years since its inception. Florence’s theory was simply a model to manipulate a person’s environment to allow the body to heal itself. This is an extremely important part of nursing as it is practiced today. It is arguably still the most important part as the body will usually heal itself given adequate time and a proper environment, however, technology and medicine cannot be denied. She could never have imagined the environment of the modern hospital nor the available tools and medicines used therein. While the truth of her theory is not changed the modern hospital is no longer the restful place that the nineteenth century sanitarium was.

Sources

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Shaner,H. (2006). Nightingale’s philosophical development. Retrieved June 23, 2009 from http://www.nihe.org/philosophy.html

Nightingale,F (1860). Notes on nursing: what is and what is not. New York: D Appleton and Company

Dossey,B (1997). Nursing as a spiritual practice: the mystical legacy of florence nightingale. Retrieved June 23, 2009 from http://www.altjn.com/perspectives/spritual_practice.htm