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Day 30 - Florence Nightingale
Mar. 30th, 2018 06:43 pmFlorence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale was the founder of modern nursing. She was born into a wealthy family in 1820 and in her early 20’s, showed no real desire to marry and live as women were supposed to do. She already wanted to study nursing, and she did so. She felt God had called her to serve others and that women were equal to men, an idea certainly lacking in the Victorian era.
She is most noted for her work in the Crimean War. She arrived to filthy, dark tents with high rates of infection. In fact, disease and infection was killing many more soldiers than war wounds were. In October 1854, she and 38 volunteer nurses that she had personally trained landed in the Crimea and in November they arrived at the hospital at Scutari. She found indifferent care, a shortage of medicines, unhygienic conditions and no place for food preparation. Mass infections were common under such conditions and mortality rates were high.
At her request, a civilian financed prefabricated hospital was sent and became Renkioi Hospital. She had the Sanitary commission come in and flush the sewers as well as repair the ventilation. She implemented handwashing and other clean practices and the death rate dropped from over 40% to around 2%.
She was often referred to as the lady of the lamp because she would check patients at night carrying a lamp from bed to bed. From the London times: She is a "ministering angel" without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.
Back in England, she carried on with her crusade of cleanliness and training nurses in the care of patients. Many of her nurses ended up running hospital all over. She even trained Linda Richards, who became the first such trained nurse in the US and pioneered proper nursing in the US and japan.
Her Nightingale School for Nursing is now the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at King’s College London. She founded the Nightingale Pledge that is a modified version of the Hippocratic
Oath.
If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale was the founder of modern nursing. She was born into a wealthy family in 1820 and in her early 20’s, showed no real desire to marry and live as women were supposed to do. She already wanted to study nursing, and she did so. She felt God had called her to serve others and that women were equal to men, an idea certainly lacking in the Victorian era.
She is most noted for her work in the Crimean War. She arrived to filthy, dark tents with high rates of infection. In fact, disease and infection was killing many more soldiers than war wounds were. In October 1854, she and 38 volunteer nurses that she had personally trained landed in the Crimea and in November they arrived at the hospital at Scutari. She found indifferent care, a shortage of medicines, unhygienic conditions and no place for food preparation. Mass infections were common under such conditions and mortality rates were high.
At her request, a civilian financed prefabricated hospital was sent and became Renkioi Hospital. She had the Sanitary commission come in and flush the sewers as well as repair the ventilation. She implemented handwashing and other clean practices and the death rate dropped from over 40% to around 2%.
She was often referred to as the lady of the lamp because she would check patients at night carrying a lamp from bed to bed. From the London times: She is a "ministering angel" without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.
Back in England, she carried on with her crusade of cleanliness and training nurses in the care of patients. Many of her nurses ended up running hospital all over. She even trained Linda Richards, who became the first such trained nurse in the US and pioneered proper nursing in the US and japan.
Her Nightingale School for Nursing is now the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at King’s College London. She founded the Nightingale Pledge that is a modified version of the Hippocratic
Oath.
If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.
Florence Nightingale
