Florence Nightingale Research Paper Outline

Florence Nightingale

Introduction
AGD: Nursing has been impacting our country for decades. One of the most influential leaders in nursing history is Florence Nightingale. “I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.”

Connect with Audience:
Florence Nightingale had a major impact on the development of medicine by changing the way nurses were viewed and creating higher sanitary standards for hospitals. Because of Florence and her observations, we do have high sanitary standards in hospitals; therefore we have decreased death rates today.

Establish Impact:
Imagine going to the hospital when you feel ill,
and being greeted by a nurse who is uneducated, with little to no experience. Before Florence, that was just how nurses were. They were usually poor servant-class workers or Roman Catholic nuns. Florence felt that all nurses should be well educated. She then started the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing.

Thesis:
Florence Nightingale is best known for having founded modern nursing and helping to improve the care provided by hospitals.
Preview Points:
Florence Nightingale is well known for not only founding modern nursing, but also for starting the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing, and for her famous contribution in the Crimean war.

Transition:
Florence realized when she was only sixteen years old that she wanted to be a nurse. She believed it to be her purpose in life. Florence decided to rebel against the traditional woman’s role of being a stay at home wife and mother. When she approached her parents about her dreams of becoming a nurse, they were not at all pleased and forbid her from going into the field.

Body:

Point 1-

Subpoint A: During the Victorian Era, a young girl with Florence’s social stature was expected to marry a wealthy man, not take on a job that was viewed as a poor servant-class job. After declining a marriage proposal when she was only 17 years old, Florence enrolled as a nursing student at the Lutheran Hospital in
Germany.

Subpoint B: Florence returned to London in the early 1850’s, taking a job at a hospital for governesses in poor health. Her performance was so outstanding, that she was promoted to superintendent within only a year of working there. After fighting a disease outbreak in the hospital due to unsanitary hospital conditions, she made it her mission to improve the hygiene procedures.

Transition: Florence just barely recovered after the disease outbreak; it took a toll on her health and she considered it the most challenging thing she did in her nursing career.

Point 2-

Subpoint A: In the fall of 1853, the Crimean war began.
Thousands of British soldiers were sent to the Black Sea, where they quickly ran out of supplies. A year later, approximately 18,000 soldiers had been admitted into the military hospitals. And at that point in time, there were no female nurses working at the hospitals in Crimea. The horrible reputation of nurses thus far, led to war officials avoiding to hire more. In late 1854, Nightingale received a letter from the Secretary of War, asking her to get together a group of nurses to help the ill and fallen soldiers in Crimea. She quickly got together a team of 34 nurses and went with them to Crimea just a few days
later.

Subpoint B: While Florence and her team of nurses had been warned of the horrible condition, nothing could’ve prepared them for what they saw. Patients were lying on stretchers, throughout hallways covered in their own feces, and various rodents and bugs. The most basic supplies where running scarce as the number of ill and wounded soldiers increased. More soldiers were dying from diseases from the hospital conditions than from injuries from the battlefield. Nightingale quickly set to work. She and the patients that were in the best health scrubbed the inside of the hospital from floor to ceilings. In the afternoons, Nightingale would move through the hospital carrying a lamp, going from patient to patient, and eventually earning the nickname of “the Lady with the Lamp.” While others simply referred to her as “the Angel of the Crimea.”

Conclusion: In addition to greatly improving the sanitary conditions of the hospitals, Nightingale came up with a number of patient services that had a part in improving the quality of the overall hospital stay. Such as special dietary rules being followed in the kitchens, a laundry service so that patients had clean linens and a library for patients to have intellectual stimulation. A prize of $250,000 from the British government was rewarded to Nightingale for her work. She decided to use the money to further her cause and established a hospital, with the “Nightingale Training School for Nurses” inside. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no longer looked down upon by the upper classes; it had come to be viewed as an honorable duty.

Works Cited

http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/florence.html

http://www.historynet.com/florence-nightingale

http://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/florence-nightingale

http://www.biography.com/people/florence-nightingale-9423539