Florence Nightingale

When embarking on nursing education, nursing theorists are an important part of understanding what it takes to be a nurse. Paper Masters suggests that Florence Nightingale is an excellent study as a nursing theorist due to her prolific career and the advancements to nursing practice that she was responsible for. Paper Masters will custom write a research paper on any aspect of Florence Nightingale for you to use as a guide.

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was a British nurse whose work during the Crimean War helped to modernize nursing as a profession and helped establish nursing as a profession. She also founded the world's first secular nursing school at St. Thomas' Hospital in London.

Nightingale grew up in a wealthy British family in England and in 1837 decided to devote her life to service towards others. In 1844, she decided to become a nurse. Her friendship with Sidney Herbert, the British Secretary of War facilitated her work during the Crimean War, where she earned the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp" due to her habit of night rounds.

Florence Nightingale and Hospital Conditions

During the Crimean War, she recognized that unsanitary hospital conditions were responsible for a high number of non-battlefield deaths. Thousands of British troops were injured in the combat and taken to military hospitals for treatment. The actual physical conditions of many of these hospitals were substandard and, as a result, the mortality rate of the soldiers was extremely high. Florence Nightingale, who had already started to acquire a reputation as a nurse with formidable organizational abilities, transferred to one of these hospitals in Scutari. Because of her focus on improving the treatment of the patients, mortality rates dropped dramatically. Nightingale learned many things during her experience in the Crimean War and she translated many of these findings in a book she wrote in 1860 entitled Notes on Nursing. In this book, Nightingale set forth many of her ideas regarding nursing and the treatment of patients. Following the war, she established the Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King's College in London and published Notes on Nursing, which became the first standard text on the subject.

Nightingale's Accomplishments

Nightingale had many accomplishments, none of the least were the following:

• Nightingale was revolutionary in her use of pie charts as a means of presenting information, a novel approach at the time.
• She trained Linda Richards, who became the first American professional nurse.
• International Nurses Day (May 12) is commemorated annual on the date of her birth.
• No less than four hospitals in Istanbul, Turkey are named after her.
• In 1912, the International Red Cross established the Florence Nightingale Medal, awarded every two years for outstanding service in the field of nursing.