Teh Nightingale Research Paper

Florence Nightingale, according to Alligood and Tomey (2010), is considered to be “the founder of modern nursing,” (pg.71). Nightingale came from a well-educated, Victorian family. She was educated by her father as well as some other tutors in subjects such as mathematics, languages, religion, and philosophy. This made her much more educated then other young women of her time. Eventually, Nightingale decided that she should become more useful in her life and felt a calling to nursing practice. Nightingale spent years in nursing practice including her work during the Crimean war caring for British soldiers. During her care of these soldiers, Nightingale felt that she needed to improve the environment in which these soldiers were residing
in so that their health could improve. She found, according to Alligood and Tomey (2010), “lack of sanitation and the presence of filth (few chamber pots, contaminated water, contaminated bed linens, and overflowing cesspools),” (pg.72). She also observed soldiers being exposed to frostbite, and opportunistic diseases as they were trying to recover from battle. The work that Nightingale did to improve these conditions, among others, made popular with the soldiers and upon returning home, was given funds to start a school for nursing education. This experience, coupled with Nightingale’s passion for nursing, influenced her development of a theory about how environmental conditions affect the healing process and health overall. Nightingale’s theory is about the impact of environmental conditions on health and healing. The components of her theory included pure air (proper ventilation without chilling the patient), pure water, efficient drainage, cleanliness, and light (especially direct sunlight), along with quiet and diet. Quiet and diet refers to the patient’s need for a quiet environment in order to get adequate rest, as well as the need for adequate nutrition that a sick individual may not get on their own without help from a nurse. She also described the importance of the nurse’s role in controlling the environment. Although the patient should be seen as an individual, and should be included in care whenever possible, the nurse is responsible for ultimately controlling the environmental conditions for the patient that allows for proper healing. Nightingale also mentioned the use of pet visits (small pets) to aid in healing. The relationship between her concepts all work together to make up a healthy environment to promote healing. Cleanliness was noted by Nightingale as important in order to avoid infection from organic material. The concepts of pure air, pure water, diet, quiet, and light all come together to create the environment that is needed for an individual to heal. A description of the relationships between concepts can be seen in the figure found on this page. Some assumptions made by Nightingale involving nursing were that every woman would be a “nurse” at some point in her life and that trained nurses should be skilled observers.
Nightingale believed every woman would be a nurse at some point because every woman will care for another’s health at some point. Assumptions involving person made by Nightingale included that a patient is a relatively passive role. However, Nightingale mentions that each patient should be involved in meal planning and should perform tasks of self-care when possible. This implies that Nightingale did consider each patient as an individual person to be cared for. According to Alligood and Tomey (2010), “Nightingale defined health as being well and using every power to the fullest extent in living life,” (pg.77). Also, Nightingale emphasized that the environment in which an individual is meant to heal in should “assist nature in healing the patient,” (pg.
77). Nightingale’s theory includes person in that she describes the person as patient. She generally refers to the patient as a passive role in nursing practice. However, Nightingale mentions the importance of allowing the patient to perform self-care and including the patient in meal planning, implying that she dis believe each patient was to be seen as an individual who should be cared for based on their specific needs. Environment is a very large part of Nightingale’s theory because she focused mainly on the need for a healthy environment to promote healing and overall health. As stated by Burns and Grove (2011), “Nightingale’s intial research focused on the importance of a healthy environment in promoting patient’s physical and mental well-being,” (pg.10). Nightingale used this theory to include health. Nightingale saw health as being well and living to the extent. She develop ideas such as using direct sunlight and pet therapy to improve mental health, while using techniques meant to lessen the spread of infection and speed healing to improve physical health. Nightingale includes nursing in that she believed every woman would be a kind of nurse at some point in caring for their loved ones, but she also expressed her belief that trained nurses required education and excellent observation skills in order to provide outstanding care. This theory will always fit into nursing practice because keeping a clean environment is essential for healing in the medical setting.
Nurses are continually learning new ways to keep the environment clean and therefore stop the spread of infection, such as better hand hygiene techniques. Continuous research will always be done based on Nightingale’s theory to find better techniques and interventions to stop the spread of contagions and keep a clean environment. Nightingale’s theory is both clear and simple enough for any novice nurse or nursing student to understand. A clean environment will aide in healing and promote overall health and wellness. This has been proven in many ways with the use of gloves, sterile technique, and hand washing. This theory can easily be generalized to any area of practice as well to areas of private care. No matter what environment the patient is in, whether it is in a home or in a hospital, a clean environment is essential to healing. Nightingale’s theory as well as clarifications and descriptions of specific parts are accessible. All nursing students and nurses will have no problem locating Nightingale’s findings and then implementing them because her work has been so influential to nursing practice. Every hospital in the country has adopted methods of sterile technique and ways to keep the patient’s environment clean. This theory could be argued to be one of the most important theories in nursing history. Nightingale made gigantic steps
toward giving patient’s the best care possible when she decided that patients needed a clean environment. Nurses can get inspiration from her to participate in research for better practice. As stated by Stanley and Sherratt (2010), “she was a powerful and successful role model for the academic, political and managerial domains of nursing,” and in conclusion, “There are other ways to lead and other types of leaders and leadership that nursing and the health service needs to foster, discover and recognize,” (pg. 115). For the rest of nursing history, nurses will read about Nightingale’s strides for nursing practice towards safe, holistic care and her methods of providing pure air, and pure water, among other basic hygienic needs, will be practiced and those methods refined forever.

References Used
Alligood, M., & Tomey, A. (2010). Nursing theorists and their work. (7th ed., pp. 71-90). Maryland Heights, MO: Mosby Inc.
Burns, N., & Grove, S. (2011). Understanding nursing research. (5th ed., pp. 10-12). Maryland Heights, MO: Saunders.
Stanley, D., & Sherratt, A. (2010). Lamp light on leadership: clinical leadership and Florence Nightingale. Journal Of Nursing Management, 18(2), 115-121. doi:10.1111/j.1365- 2834.2010.01051.x