*LIFE OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE*.
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Florence Nightingale was a woman who because of her religious convictions and profound vision of the potential of nursing altered the status of nursing from that of domestic service to that of a profession in the 19th century . She will be forever be remembered for the monumental role she played in the discovery of modern nursing.
Nightingale used personal motivation to create a permanent professional transformation of nursing. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1857 described Nightingale as “the Lady with the Lamp” in his poem.
The Encyclopedia Britannica records that Florence Nightingale was born on 12 May 1820 in Florence and died on 13 August 1910.
She was the second daughter born to William Edwards and Frances Nightingale. She was named after the city of her birth. The Nightingales lived a contented lifestyle. They had two homes one located in Lea Hurst in Derbyshire in Central England and the other at Embley Park in warmer Hampshire located in South England .
Florence was a bright child and therefore her father gave meticulous attention to her education guiding her through history, philosophy, and literature. She also excelled in mathematics and languages such as French, German, Italian, Greek, and Latin at a tender age. She liked to read great philosophies and to hold in stern political and social conversation with her father .
Florence found a great relief in her religious belief; therefore, at the age of sixteen she received one of several “calls from God.” She saw this meticulous calling as decreasing human suffering. To Florence, nursing seemed as an appropriate course to serve both God and humankind. As a result of this, she helped to care for her sick relatives and tenants on the family estates. Her efforts to seek nurse’s training were hindered by her family as an inappropriate activity for a woman of her calibre .
Eventually she was able to sign up at the Institution Protestant Deaconess at the Kairserswert in Germany for two weeks of training in July 1850 and again for three months in July 1851.
It was then that she learned basic nursing, the magnitude of patient observation, and the value of good hospital organization. Through her social acquaintances, she became the Superintendent of the Institution for Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances in London. Through her hardworking efforts, she realized that her services would be helpful in an institution where she would be able to train more nurses. She considered becoming the superintendent of nurses at King’s College Hospital in London. However, politics, not nursing expertise, was to shape her next move .
Florence’s father was a “landed gentleman” who set up a lead and weaving factory .
Florence Nightingale grew up as an upper middle-class woman in Victorian England .
She was one of the few ladies who were educated during Victorian England as a result of her father’s opinion against the norm of the time that women of Nightingale’s class must not attend university and also must not pursue professional careers but rather had to marry and bear children instead .
Due to her father’s opinion against this norm, he single-handedly taught her Italian, Latin, Greek, philosophy, history, writing, and mathematics .
However, it must be noted that her father also arranged for a governess to teach her and her sister music and drama but her sister resented this decision .
From early childhood, Florence Nightingale got bored and frustrated as a result of the low-standard life that was reserved for women of her class in shrill contrast to that of the masses .
Florence had a strong will and this manifested in the “call” that she had which required her to devote her entire life to serving humanity at the age of seventeen .
Suzanne also commenting on Nightingale’s “calling” indicated that
“February 7, 1837 was a critical turning point in young Florence’s life. She believed she heard the voice of God calling her to service.
Following this mysticism, Florence became convinced God needed her for his service, but she remained baffled as to the exact job she was requested to do. Florence experienced much confusion and distress regarding her service to God. She travelled to Egypt and Greece in 1850 and engaged in spiritual discussions and thought as she travelled up the Nile” .
Nightingale was eager to know what she will do with her calling and out of her contemplations she is believed to have said at a point in time that “today I am 30- the age Christ began his mission. Now Lord, let me only think of thy will, what Thou willest me to do-O-Lord, Thy will, Thy will” .
Upon returning from Egypt and Greece, Florence and her entourage visited Kaiserswerth in Germany, where Pastor Theodore Fliedner (1800–1864) had founded a hospital, orphanage, and school in 1836 .
At the age of thirty, Florence Nightingale returned to Kaiserswerth against her family’s opposition to train as a nurse and she proved herself as a pupil with an outstanding ability after three months of training .
After her return from Kaiserswerth, she became idle for some time but, between 1851 and 1854, she put to use the practical experience that she gained by visiting hospitals throughout the United Kingdom and Europe to gather information .
Florence Nightingale’s dream of becoming a proper nurse materialized when she came into contact with Sidney Herbert (1810–1861) during a winter holiday in Rome .
Sidney Herbert later became a foreign secretary for war and requested the service of Florence Nightingale to lead a team of thirty-eight nurses to assist at the main British Army hospital at Scutari, near Constantinople, to cure British wounded soldiers of the Crimean War.
However, Neuhaser has put forward that Nightingale went along with forty nurses and they helped clean up the wards
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Sidney Herbert’s decision to appoint Florence Nightingale to lead the group of nurses was seen as a radical step because it was unprecedented in the sense that no woman had previously held an official position in the Army .
Upon their arrival, Nightingale and her team were faced with awful scenes as they were faced with dirty beds, clogged latrines, bad food, filth, and death .
For instance, in the week of 14 April 1855, 215 hand carts of filth were removed, the sewers were flushed 19 times, and the carcasses of two horses, a cow, and four dogs were buried by Nightingale’s team of nurses .
Attewell has also put across that Nightingale was not wishing to imperil the prospect of alienating the doctors that she met at Scutari so she placed the nurses under the doctors’ orders and within a month she secured the improvements in the upkeep of the wards, provided new bedding and clothing for the soldiers, and improved the hospital diets .
In addition to this claim, Attewell has also posited that Nightingale wrote letters on behalf of the soldiers to their families back at home, instituted a scheme for remitting moneys, and also provided reading rooms and games for the convalescents .
Cohen recounts the situation that Nightingale and her party of nurses met when they arrived at Scutari as follows:
“The conditions Nightingale and her party found when they arrived at Scutari on November 5, the day of the major battle of Inkerman were appalling. The hospital barracks was infested with fleas and rats. Under the buildings, as a commission of inquiry later reported, ‘were sewers…loaded with filth…through which the wind blew sewer air up the pipes of numerous open privies into the corridors and wards were the sick were lying’ on straw mats in a state of overcrowding that got even worse after Inkerman” .
Cohen has also noted that the canvas sheets, according to Nightingale, were “so coarse that the wounded men begged to be left in their blankets” and also the laundry was done in cold water which made the linens washed become “verminous” that they had to be destroyed .
Nightingale’s spell at the Crimean was marked by many hardships. Among them is that “Florence Nightingale battled with the military authorities, the purveyors department and was a thorn in the side of the superintendent of Army medical services” .
C. J. Gill and G. C. Gill have also noted that there was a high case of corruption in the camp and this led to the siphoning off medical supplies; in order to curb this problem Nightingale established a parallel supply mechanism for critical materials and food, and this step made her prove that the official supplies were being stolen by sending her representatives to Turkish markets to buy back the purloined goods .
Nightingale in her own sense per the words of C. J. Gill and G. C. Gill, when she was faced with the imminent arrival of more patients, organized a team of 200 Turkish workers to replace the floor in Barracks hospital which was destroyed by fire and was an ideal habitat for fleas, flies, and lice.
Again, when Nightingale arrived at Scutari, she met deplorable Barracks which housed 10,000 sick men, with dirt and filth throughout the hospital. In addition, patients who were lying in the corridors and the wards were suffering from typhoid fever and cholera, as well as battling wounds .
In spite of this, Nightingale made a lot of impacts and contributions in her nursing adventure on Scutari. She instituted a lot of reforms, which were very essential. For instance, this is an account that a fever casualty brought to Scutari gave about the changes that he noticed, “everything changed for the better. The sick were not kept waiting in the passages but went at once to bed, were washed, and had clean linen and were attended as well as in England” .
Neuhauser has also pointed out that Nightingale recorded the outcomes of care which went a long way to helping her to estimate that the death rate among the patients was worst in February 1885 at 42.7% of all soldiers admitted .
She also instituted sanitary reforms which were started on 17 March 1855 and this reform caused the death rate to fall to 2.2% by June 1855 .
However, it must be taken into cognizance that, upon the reforms and the positive outcome that came out from it, the principal Medical Officer of the Army said that the reduction in death rates was due to the improved character of the cases coming from the Crimean peninsula .
Florence Nightingale however rebutted this claim by showing that the deaths were not due to battle field wounds but from infectious diseases and also went along to assert that the hospital’s unsanitary environment led to the deaths of both wounded soldiers and healthy unwounded orderlies at Scutari .
After her service at Scutari, many are those who have associated Nightingale to be the originator of modern nursing and also had an enormous influence on contemporary nursing .
Among such influences is hospital infection control. C. J. Gill and G. C. Gill assess this influence in this way, “although the Crimean War settled nothing in terms of geopolitics, it served as the backdrop for a second struggle between the sanitarian movement and the medical dogma of the day, which the sanitarians at least won decisively” .
However, C. J. Gill and G. C. Gill were quick to note that “Nightingale cannot claim credit for originating the sanitarian theories, but the impact of her reforms in Scutari were so obvious and well publicized that the treatment of hospitalized and infected patients was forever changed” .
The second field influenced by Nightingale is hospital epidemiology. Nightingale was a skilled statistician and she was believed to be greatly influenced by the work of Adolphe Quetelet, the leading statistician of her days .
Her third influence on contemporary medicine is that on hospice medicine. Long before Kubler-Ross’ theories about death with dignity, Nightingale has been noted to have practiced it in the sense that as a nurse she saved dozens of soldiers’ lives but she also reported that she closed the eyes of hundreds .
*Florence, the Heroine in the Crimea War*
Bloy a Ph.D. Senior Research fellow at the Victoria Web conducted a research about the life of Florence Nightingale and the role she played in the Crimea War. According to Bloy’s research in March 1854, the Crimea War broke out and the sufferings of the wounded soldiers created anger in Britain. Therefore, William Russell who was the Times correspondent published in the newspaper the state of wounded soldiers. Subsequently, Florence wrote to the war office offering her services on 14 October after her friend Sidney Herbert had written to her suggesting to her to go and help these wounded soldiers .
Bloy further argues that on 21 October Florence embarked on a journey to Crimea with thirty-eight nurses, ten Roman Sisters, eight Anglican Sisters of Mercy, six nurses from St. John Institute, and fourteen from various hospitals and they arrived on 4 November. She was the lady-in-chief .
Upon arrival, they saw the place to be very inappropriate to care for injured soldiers. Moreover, Bloy continues to argue that the military and the medical authorities at Scutari saw Nightingale’s involvement as an indication on themselves .
Moreover, Bloy’s research asserts that by the closing stages of 1854 Nightingale and her nurses had brought the Scutari hospital into an improved order. In December, other forty-six nurses went to add up to the other thirty-six. Through Florence hard work, she earned the name the “lady of the lamb.” As a result of the poor sanitation system at the Scutari hospital, there was an increase in Florence patients and this made the wards full and some died. In 1855, Florence fell ill from Crimea fever but she continued to work until the hospitals were closed and she returned to England in 1856. In September 1856, she visited Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Balmoral and told them about the state of the military hospitals and reforms that need to be done .
Bloy further contends that in November 1853 the Nightingale Fund was set up to train nurses. By 1860 50,000 had been collected and the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses was established at the St. Thomas Hospital. As a result of her health condition, she could not accept the post as superintendent but she watched the progress of the new institution and was able to use her experiences in Crimea for the assistance of nursing profession. She settled in London and lived a retired life of an invalid although she spent great deal of time offering counsel and support through her writings and also verbally. She also helped to set up nursing societies.
As a result of her hard working efforts, in 1901, she received the Order of Merit and in 1908 she was awarded the Freedom of City of London award. She had already received the German Order of the Cross of Merit and the French gold medal of Secours aux Blessés Militaires awards. On 10 May 1910, she was presented with the badge of honour of the Norwegian Red Cross Society .
Bloy’s research on the role of Florence Nightingale shows that an extensive research was done about the lasting impacts Florence made in the Crimea War. However, Bloy’s research entailed some shortcomings, among which was the failure to give an account of the cause of the Crimea War and also to highlight the parties involved in the war.
*Florence Nightingale the Social Reformer*
The Spartacus Educational Publishers researched about the social reforms made by Florence Nightingale after the significant role played in the Crimea War. The Spartacus Educational Publishers opine that, in order for Florence Nightingale to broaden her opinions on the reforms about the military hospitals, she published two books which were Notes on Hospitals (1859) and Notes on Nursing (1859). With the help from her affluent friends and John Delane at the Times, she was able to raise 59,000 to advance the quality of nursing. She used the money to start the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses at the St. Thomas Hospital. She also helped to train nurses for employment of workhouses .
Florence held an immense judgment about the rights of women therefore in her book Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth; she argued muscularly for the elimination of limits that prohibited women from having careers .
However, the Spartacus Publishers continue to argue that Nightingale powerfully contributed to the passing of Contagious Diseases Act. She preferred working behind the scene to get laws changed and disapproved of women making speeches in public .
Spartacus Educational Publishers support their assertion that women such as Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake were dissatisfied by Florence’s lack of support for women doctors. Nightingale argued that it was better to train nurses than women doctors.
According to the Spartacus research on Florence biographer Colin Mathew emphasized that when Florence was sixty years, she considered herself old. Therefore, she tried to keep up with public health matters and continued to write corny addresses to probationers until 1889 but by now she was losing her eye sight. Therefore, she spent the whole of her fifteen years in her room in South Street and finally died in London on 13 August 1910 .
It is very important to note that the Spartacus Educational Publishers did an extensive research about the theme under review. However, Nightingale is known for the role she played in nursing and therefore the Spartacus Educational Publishers failed to throw more light on the reforms she made in the nursing profession.
Nightingale was a philanthropist from a wealthy English family who lived during a time when well-bred women from the upper class were not usually involved in caring for the sick. Despite the convention, Nightingale wanted to study the care and treatment of diseases and afflictions, so she enrolled in a three-month program to study nursing under the direction of Pastor Fliedner and his wife Erika at Kaiserswerth, Germany .
Upon graduation from the program, Nightingale became involved in creating organization called “Establishment for Gentle Women during Illness.” Ultimately, she was appointed to the leadership position of this organization, because she was knowledgeable as a result of prior experience in the administration of hospitals and she had expertise in nursing. As her work in nursing was acknowledged, she was consulted in the organization of training nurses; however, her efforts in Crimean War intervened. Florence Nightingale became involved in the Crimean War (1853–1856) after hearing about the squalid conditions of soldiers who had been injured. She organized other nurses who joined her in bringing aid, comfort, and supplies to injured soldiers.
When Nightingale returned home to London, she was honoured as a national heroine. She remained committed to establishing a program to train nurses. In 1860, Nightingale established a training program for nurses at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, where Florence Nightingale Museum is presently housed. Shortly thereafter, Nightingale took to her bed until her death in 1910. It was believed that her illness resulted from a weakened condition attributed to her work during Crimean War.
*Nightingale and Advocacy*
According to Macmillan English Dictionary, advocacy has been defined as a strongly public support for something. Sabatier and Weible identify coalitions built on advocacy as the essential tool to impacting changes in society and governmental programmes .
The scope of Florence Nightingale’s effect on nursing and her usage of advocacy as a technical tool to operate are fundamental. “Modern nursing derives so completely from the examples and teachings of Florence Nightingale that is hard to pick out the particular practices that owe their existence to her influence. All nursing has been influence by her” .
However, Nightingale did not directly address the concept of advocacy. She demonstrated advocacy in exceptional ways throughout her lifetime. She did demonstrate in dramatic fashion in the Crimea that nursing and sanitation could reduce mortality. Nightingale was a singular force in advocating for as opposed to individuals, groups, and the nursing profession. Her expressions of advocacy grew with age, experience, and public acceptance of her as both nurse and expert. Her significant contributions include her advocacy for patient’s environment connected to his or her health and advocacy in her leadership roles. Nursing is now recognizing how her ideas and techniques can be useful in the 21st century.
*Advocacy through Patients Environment*
“Nightingale environment theory stemmed from her core belief that nursing was in essence an act of using the environment to assist the patient in his or her recovery” .
Florence Nightingale was convinced that a patient’s environment was connected to his or her health. She believed nurses could use sunlight, fresh air, pure water, cleanliness, and efficient drainage to allow nature to positively affect the patient’s body, mind, and spirit, a revolutionary concept at the time. The year was 1854, and she was treating soldiers serving in the Crimean War. In those inhuman conditions, she believed that patients required a healthy mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual environment to raise their odds of recovery. She understood that physicians would treat the disease but nurses were the ones who could facilitate the healing environment by providing stimulating reading materials, emotional connections, and proper nutrition. According to Barbara Dossey, “Nightingale saw that nurses could be healing presence to patients, nurses should not go in angry and frustrate but convey a sense of calmness and intention.” Not only could nurses help influence the patient’s environment to facilitate the healing recovery but they are also part of the environment. However, Nightingale saw that these conditions and practices from physicians and nurses could help improve the health conditions of the populace. That is to say, the importance of nursing’s role in the management of the patient environment was a central theme she advocated for. She believed in miasmatism , the idea that foul odors caused disease. Although there is dispute as to the degree that the death rate was reduced in the Crimea, it is undeniable that there was a specific link between the state of the environment and the death rate.
3.5. Advocacy through Leadership
Leadership was one of Florence Nightingale’s qualities. She offered emotional and spiritual comfort of care to the sick and the dying men as she walked down the dark hall with her lamp. These selfless practices earned her the nickname “Lady with the Lamp.” “Imagine a big hall that is three stories high and two football fields long, and in the dark these men would see Nightingale walking with her lamp to check on them, she was bring them a sense of hope and reassurance on a spiritual level” .
She also understood the importance of family to the sick thereby helping them to connect to their families back home. She helped the soldiers in the hospital write letters to their families because many could not read and write. “Nightingale was a change agent in her own right and seemed to be able to do without compromise; leadership techniques and advocacy were many of her strong points” .
She used leadership skills to her advantage in her tireless work with policy change in regard to human rights. She was able to change policy, making it possible for all faiths to be equally admitted to the hospital. It is very important for advance degree nurse, to be effective in her role as a leader and educator to provide students with the tools necessary to promote good healthcare.
Florence Nightingale’s substantial legacy to health statistics is a composite of her accomplishments and her vision of what can and should be done by the profession. She wrote prolifically and demonstrated methods that were effective. Her lessons have become a roadmap for future generations. Most of her significant contribution to nursing is learned from her advocacy. Such advocacy includes the patient advocacy especially for the wounded soldier. Florence Nightingale created and built the nursing profession on the foundation of a holistic mind-body approach, assessing the individual and creating care plan interventions based on the emotional, psychological, medical, social, spiritual, and environmental challenges with the nurse being the primary advocate, fighting for and ensuring resources to maintain optimal outcomes and a decrease in mortality and morbidity, and also through showing great leadership qualities and the importance and value of nursing education.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, issues related to sanitation in relationship to the health of communities were primary concern of the healthcare planners and providers. During the 20th century, the discovery of new and more potent antibiotics and other scientific breakthroughs changed forever how the healthcare system dealt with infections. Towards the mid-20th century, a shift in priority from health of the community to the health and well-being of the individual occurred and towards the end of 20th century another shift toward care of the patient in the community occurred. Today, healthcare system is seen more sophisticated than previous generations because it is based on technology and science. Although such occurrence is happening in the 21st century, Florence Nightingale advocacy has so much influence on the management of healthcare worldwide.
*Florence Nightingale’s Advocacy on Egalitarian Human Rights and Leadership*
The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing (OJIN) is a peer-reviewed, online publication that addresses current topics affecting nursing practices, research, education, and the wider healthcare sector. In an article written by Selanders and Crane in OJIN, attention was paid to how Florence Nightingale promoted advocacy through egalitarian human rights and leadership.
According to the research made by Selanders and Crane, Nightingale did not openly address the concept of advocacy. She rather verified advocacy in the outstanding ways throughout her lifestyle. This was demonstrated through her proceedings, ideas, and motivations through her communication .
Nightingale was a remarkable power in advocating for as opposed to individuals, groups, and the nursing profession. Her expression of advocacy grew with age, experience, and public reception of her nurse and expert. Her momentous contributions include her advocacy for egalitarian human right and her advocacy in her leadership role .
Selanders and Crane further argue that Florence in promoting advocacy through the backing of egalitarian human rights realized the lopsided status and opportunity given to men as compared to women in the English society. Therefore, in her aggravation she wrote a long essay named Cassandra in 1859/1979. In this book, she compares the professed value of a woman’s activity to that of a man. Her first significant exhibition of advocacy for individuals came at the age of thirty-two. She assumed the position of a superintendent at the hospital for Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstance, which was her first employment .
Although she had the support of the Ladies Committee, the body to which she reported, her first major apprehension was a policy held by the committee that only individual members of the Church of England would be admitted to the institution. Nightingale could not accept this position because of her liberal Unitarian upbringing and her beliefs in the value of individuals without the respect of religious fondness. Eventually she won the battle with the committee so that patients of all faith or no faith were equally admitted into the institution. She won this encounter partially through rational persuasion and also because she came from the upper class .
Selanders and Crane opine that, after this victory, Nightingale turned her attention to the expansion of care values for patients including the right to peaceful death. This was because the chronically and mentally ill were often disregarded by the hospital staff. Therefore, any staff member who did not work to Nightingale’s standard was dismissed to signal and apply the administrative standards of care. They further maintained that Nightingale never wavered from the idea that the basic human right was high quality patient care that dedicated nursing staff should provide. This influenced Nightingale to advocate for patients on a larger stage during her twenty months in Scutari and the Crimea. Therefore, after her return to England, she established similar principles at the Nightingale School at St. Thomas Hospital .
The report of the researchers Selanders and Crane as found in OJIN on Nightingale advocacy through leadership also revealed that leadership was one of Florence Nightingale’s intrinsic personas. Her education, social standing, wide range of connections, and global travel provided her with vital context, opportunity, and public voice which was used to promote her belief in the central role of the nurse to manage the environment .
Although this was an erroneous theory, it focused on the role of the environment in relation to illness. The deplorable conditions at Scutari reinforced this viewpoint, leading to her advocating for the importance of a suitable environment for patient both internally and extremely. She was also a supporter of the sanitation movement in London and therefore joins forces with reformers such as Farr and Chadwick in advocating for permanent improvement in public health. She saw that the expansion of nursing as crucial force would meet the growing healthcare needs in sectors outside the hospital.
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The second major theme of leadership of Nightingale’s advocacy accordingly was the establishment of the Nightingale School at St. Thomas Hospital in London, which was used to advocate for nurses who had a familiarity base and a specific role in healthcare. In this regard, she saw the expansion of nursing as an essential force for growing healthcare needs in sectors outside the hospital. Therefore, she resorted to the improvement of nursing in the military, midwifery, care of paupers, and nurse visiting (public health nursing). The Nightingale model of nursing education was executed through the following ways.
Firstly, it was made to be firmly restricted to environment which included a nurse’s home with a matron who served as a parent or guardian. Secondly, it extended nursing to the typical woman’s sphere by projecting it as a domestic work that had been transplanted into the hospital .
The analysis above clearly shows that the OJIN did an extensive research on the Florence Nightingale as it discusses her two important advocacy areas.
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*Florence Nightingale’s Philosophy of Nursing*
Dr. Whitfield who is an adjunct faculty member in the online MSN program at Benedictine University conducted a research and published an article about the philosophy of Florence Nightingale to examine if present nursing has been able to meet the mark.
Dr. Whitfield argues historical analysis of nursing practice over the years has helped to provide many examples of nurses’ contribution to the communities. This raises the question on whether modern nursing has met or exceeded the standard set by Florence Nightingale. There is no doubt that Florence Nightingale is remembered for her stoicism (the stoics taught that distractive emotions resulted from error in judgment and that a sage or person of moral and intellectual perfection would not suffer such emotions) and significant impact on nursing today and also advocacy and commitment to her patients. Dr. Whitfield further argues that many of the criticisms levelled against Nightingale were because there was a false belief that she emphasized nursing as subservience to physicians or focused on the physical factors compared to psychological factors of nursing. Additionally, Dr. Whitfield maintains that there were many instances in Florence’s life that contradict these beliefs. Nightingale understood very well the psychological connection to healing and actually believed that nurses should always speak up when things were unacceptable or inadequate . She opines that Nightingale was an agent of change in her own right and seemed she was able to do so without any compromise.
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One of Nightingale advantages was her leadership techniques and advocacy for policy change, especially in the areas of human rights.
Moreover, Dr. Whitfield calls on nurses of today to be effective in their roles as leaders and educators to promote health. Nurses should also be able to meet the needs of their patients without compromising their values and beliefs .
Dr. Whitfield concludes that the Nightingale’s philosophy still rings loud and clear today and most likely continues to influence nursing and healthcare alike. Therefore, it would be much better if nursing today continues to enhance and build on Nightingale’s theory thereby making the nursing profession an honourable one that exceeds the mark of Nightingale’s philosophical legacy
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*Compiled By*
*Goodluck Jonathan Tampuor*
Registered Nurse|| Writter|| Youth Activist|| Blogger ||
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References:
1- M. Bloy, “Life of Florence Nightingale and the role she played during the Crimea War,” January 2012, http://www.victorianweb.org/history/crimea/florrie.html .
2- J. Whitfield, Florence Nightingale's Philosophy of Nursing: Have We Met the Mark? Benedictine University, 2013,
http://online.ben.edu/blog/health/florence-nightingales-philosophy-of-nursing-have-we-met-the-mark.
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3- F. Stockwell, A Contemporary Perspective on Florence Nightingale's Writings in Notes on Nursing and Florence Nightingale to Her Nurses, 2010.
4- C. J. Gill and G. C. Gill, “Nightingale in Scutari: her legacy reexamined,”
Clinical Infectious Diseases, vol. 40, no. 12, pp. 1799–1805, 2005.
5-K. J. Egenes, “History of nursing,” in
Issues and Trends in Nursing: Essential Knowledge for Today and Tomorrow , Jones & Bartlett, 2009.
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