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Florence Nightingale 's Influence On Nursing

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Biography

Florence Nightingale was born May 12, 1820 in Florence Italy. She was born the second child in an affluent family. Nightingale’s parents had afforded her with a formal education in her childhood. Florence set her sights on nursing as she felt it was a calling from God. Nightingale’s parents forbid her to go to into nursing as they deemed it to be of lower class, instead the family pressured her to marry a wealthy man and join upper class society (Cohen, 1984).
In 1951 at the age of 31, Florence finally was able to leave her family to work in an orphanage hospital in Dusseldorf Germany. Florence then moved her work to another hospital Sisters of Mercy in St. Germain close to Paris France. In 1953 at age 33 Florence was working in London as the superintendent of “establishment for gentile-women during illness” (Cohen, 1984). This was the first supervisory role for Florence and the starting point of creating a nursing standard.
Florence stayed in the supervisory role for only one year due to the Crimea war. Florence received news about the unsanitary and negligently staffed military hospitals. British military were left without medical care, due to a shortage of doctors, no nurses, and limited supplies (Florence Nightingale, 2016). Florence saw this and decided it was her opportunity to fill her calling to nursing. Florence wrote to her long time friend and secretary of State Sidney Herbert to volunteer for service. Nightingale was able to recruit and train 38

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