Florence Nightingale 's Importance For Nursing

I gained an abundance of knowledge from reading about their achievements and contributions to the field of nursing. I have adopted many of their ideals as my own. From the words of Florence Nightingale herself,

Nightingale, F. (1860).Notes on nursing: what it is and what it is not. New York:D.Appleton And Company.

If Nightingale were alive today, she would find it strange hospitals exist at all. She regarded them as belonging to a stage of "imperfect civilization", and envisaged their end by the year 2000. Florence would have understood the growth of the primary care movement. Having its roots in her own work, she would have been alarmed by the conditions of acute care evident in some hospitals today. High bed-occupancy rates, the poor hygiene, and the lack of space and of privacy .All of which go against the central tenets of her writings.

Florence Nightingale was an immense impact on nursing, who “became famous for her revolutionary work as a nurse during the Crimean War” (Kent 30). “She dedicated her life to improving conditions in hospitals, beginning in an army hospital during the Crimean War,” (3 Registered). Her actions were then used by “concerned individuals, rather than by professionally trained nurses” during the Civil War, (Registered 279). Many of Nightingale’s ideas were brought into modern times, but with the improvement of technology and licensed nurses. With the influence and patience of Florence Nightingale, nursing has evolved into an outstanding career.

However, Florence Nightingale changed nursing practice, where she was commonly referred to as lady of the lamp (Finkelman and Kenner, 2013). Nightingale established a domestic mode of nursing training in which education of nurses was about the information of character at the Saint Thomas Hospital (Carol, 2011). According to Nightingale the tasks of every nurse was not only to care for the sick but to act as a public agent of moral reform, and to weaken the power of medical men (Nelson, 2010). Rafferty (1996) argue that, nursing

I will be summarizing Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not by Florence Nightingale. Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not was first published in 1860 with the last edition being published in 1969 (Adams-Wending, 2010). Nightingale’s theory addresses the importance of providing an environment that is conducive to the healing process for patients (Nightingale, 1860). Nightingale’s theory of the environment was based off the idea that disease was caused by smell of decomposing matter (Adams-Wending, 2010). The theory is broken down into thirteen “canons” of nursing (Nightingale, 1860). The thirteen topics within this theory are: ventilation and warming, health of houses, petty management, noise, variety, taking food, what food?, bed and bedding, cleanliness of rooms and walls, personal cleanliness, chattering of hope and advices, and observations of the sick. Nightingale (1860) states that ventilation is to make the air the patient breaths as fresh as the air outside. This also goes into detail of removing chamber pots

A quote from Nightingales early writings defined “nursing is the act of utilizing the environment of the patient to assist in recovery” this is not only true in a patient’s recovery but is also true for the well being and the health of the patient and family included (Harvard Libraries, 2012). Nightingales theory of environment is the responsibility of the nurse this in essesence make the nurse in control of the patient’s environment, she has the ability to identify the environmental deficits and apply Nightingale’s concepts directs the nurse to make adjustments and advocate for the patient .(Harvard Libraries, 2012).

The nurse arrives to see Isabel a new mother of a 3 week old. Isabell is exhausted from taking care of her newborn and in addition has a toddler to care for. The room she and her children are housed in is unclean, unventilated and there are safety concerns as well. A nurse working under the Nightingale’s theory would not presume to know why conditions are what they are, but proceed by first making observations of the environment, the person’s interaction with the environment and the patient’s psychological and spiritual wellbeing (Parker and Smith, 2010).

Florence Nightingale, or as soldiers on the battlefield would call her the “Lady with the Lamp”, was an inspirational women of the nineteenth century that had many aspirations and dreams concerning the care of others. Achieving these dreams by “facilitating the reparative processes of the body by manipulating the patient’s environment” (Potter & Perry 2009, p. 45); Nightingale laid the foundations of modern nursing and gave the country and many others a system that has stood the test and remains timeless. In this, Florence has become one of the most widely known nursing theorist to this day.

Florence Nightingale, born in 1820, revolutionized nursing as it is today. Throughout her time working with the wounded soldiers during the Crimean War, she noted that more soldiers were dying of infections than from wounds. Therefore, she worked to ensure sanitation as well as sufficient health and healing practices amongst her patients. From care to prevention, Nightingale’s practices were able to set the foundation for nurses today. Nightingale distinguished that a healthy environment is essential to one’s health and thus her tenets of ventilation, cleanliness, light, as well as nutrition set the bases of the City of Toronto’s tuberculosis program for the under-housed, homeless, and the correctional population.

Chitty (2011) stated “Nightingale promoted the view that nurses’ primary responsibility was to protect patients by careful management of their surroundings” (p. 306). Nightingale saw nursing as placing the patient in an environment where nature can assist in providing optimum health conditions. According to Gillette “Nursing functions influence the human environment to affect health” (1996, p. 264). While Nightingale understood the importance of medicine she emphasized the importance of environment on health. Nursing was not just for the patient but the environment and its relationship to the patient.

     “Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, It requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation, as any painter´s or sculptor´s work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God´s spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.” Spoken by a true nurse, Florence Nightingale; a pioneer of nursing and a reformer of hospital sanitation methods.

“Nursing is an art, and if it is to be made an art, requires as exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation, as any painter’s or sculptor’s work...” (Nightingale, 1868)

This course really developed my self as a nurse, and it will help me in giving care to actual clients in the real world as well. First of all, this course taught us all about Florence Nightingale, who is viewed as one of the first nursing theorists. Her becoming a nurse, her practices as a nurse, her theory, her tenets, and most importantly, her being one of the most influential figures, even as of this very day. In this course, through essay writing we understood more about how Florence Nightingale’s theory and practices are still relevant today. We were able to connect her tenets to the real world programs. This can really help us in giving care because we learnt about how her practices are applied and so we are also able to apply her practices while providing clients care. Not only that, but we learned about how committed Nightingale was to provide the utmost care for the client and how the client is very important, with knowing this, we can also provide the greatest care that the client deserves. She strived for professional nursing and had laid the foundation, and we need to follow in these footsteps as well. Her achievements can aid in motivating us to become better and improve ourselves as a nurse everyday, as she did emphasize the importance of restoring one’s health.

Theory and practice are said to go hand in hand. Theory is shaped based on practice and insight, while it also gives shape and foundation to practice. Florence Nightingale is acknowledged as the founder of modern nursing and a theorist. She believed in the patient’s capacity for self-healing which is reinforced by the nurse’s ability to create an environment conducive to health (Smith &Parker, 2015, p. 50). Her philosophy of nursing is that one should put the patient in the best position for nature to act on him or her. This paper will identify the five essential components of her theory to draw out an appropriate plan of care for Mrs. Adams in the case study. In addition, discuss the applicability of Nightingale’s