Florence Nightingale and Modern Nursing Research Paper by Patricia
Florence Nightingale and Modern Nursing
An overview of Florence Nightingale's life and her contribution to nursing practices.
# 154145
| 1,208 words
| 8 sources
| 2014
| 
Published
on Mar 30, 2015
in
Sociology
(General)
, Medical and Health
(General)
, Women Studies
(General)
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From the Paper:
"Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was the founder of modern nursing. She was born in Florence, Italy into an upper-class family. She received an exemplary education from her father, a graduate of Cambridge, who instructed her in German, French, Italian, Latin, and classical Greek, as well as in history, philosophy, and science (Huxley,1975). When she was sixteen years old, she grew tired of her privileged and purposeless life, and wrote in a private note that God had called her into His service. She knew that service to God meant service to humanity, but the precise means of doing so eluded her (Woodham-Smith, 1996)."Nightingale sought advice from a friend, Christian von Bunsen, an Egyptologist and the Prussian ambassador to the British court, asking him what she could do the lift the load of suffering from those who were helpless and miserable. In response, Bunsen gave her the yearbook of the Institution of Deaconesses in Kaiserswerth, Germany, a hospital and orphanage served by Protestant nuns, and suggested she become a nurse (Small, 1999).
The thought of caring for the sick appealed to Florence's desire to perform service, but terrified her mother. In the early nineteenth century, nurses were little more than servants, often women without a family. Mrs. Nightingale denied her daughter's request to spend a few months training as a nurse. Florence's only solace was nursing sick relatives and villagers near her home. This was her only training as a nurse; she learned from experience and used the knowledge to train others (Vickers, 2000).
"Although she had no formal training, Nightingale's official status as a nurse occurred when she led a group of 38 nurses from England to Turkey in 1854. Britain was at war with Russia (the Crimean War) and hospitals were poorly staff in in bad conditions. She revolutionized the field of nursing and forever transformed military and public health care in Europe. A brilliant organizer, she created order amid the chaos of the ill-equipped Scutari army hospital, which was located in a municipality of Istanbul, Turkey at Scutari. She introduced sanitary reforms, and because she was aware of the necessity of healing the mind as well as the body, she established schools and libraries for the soldiers. As a result of these efforts, the mortality rate dropped from 60% to 2%. Nightingale advocated promotion of health and development of independence by encouraging patients to perform their own health care. She believed that this, in turn, would reduce their anxiety in the face of illness (Dossey, 2000; Vickers, 2000)."
Sample of Sources Used:
- After enduring several years of ill health and blindness, Florence Nightingale died on August 13, 1910. Nightingale was ahead of her time in many of her concepts, as they were not adopted in North America until the twentieth century (Dossey, 2000).
- References
- Allen, D. (1975). Florence Nightingale: Toward a psychohistorical interpretation. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6: 23-45.
- Dossey, B. (2000). Florence Nightingale. Springhouse, PA: Springhouse Corp.
- Huxley, E. (1975). Florence Nightingale. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
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Florence Nightingale and Modern Nursing (2015, March 30)
Retrieved December 04, 2023, from https://www.academon.com/research-paper/florence-nightingale-and-modern-nursing-154145/
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"Florence Nightingale and Modern Nursing" 30 March 2015.
Web. 04 December. 2023. <https://www.academon.com/research-paper/florence-nightingale-and-modern-nursing-154145/>