2024-05-12 08:27:18
May 12, 2024
The world celebrates International Nurses Day on May 12 each year in recognition of the tireless and invaluable contributions of nurses to healthcare and global health security. This celebration coincides with the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, considered the pioneer of modern nursing.
Who is Florence Nightingale?
Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820 in Florence, Italy, and died on August 13, 1910 in London, the British capital. She was a British nurse, social worker and pioneer of modern nursing. She also practiced statistics. This is according to the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Nightingale was put in charge of the care of British and Allied soldiers in Turkey during the Crimean War, where she spent long hours on the wards, and her nightly rounds providing personal care to the wounded established her image as “Lady of the lamp” as she walked among the wounded, tending them while carrying a lamp.
Her efforts to formalize nursing training led to the establishment of the first science-based nursing school, the Nightingale School of Nursing, at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, which opened in 1860. She was the first woman to receive the Order of Merit. in 1907.
Family and “God’s Call”
Florence Nightingale was the second daughter of William Edward and Frances Nightingale. (William Edward’s original name was Shore; he changed his name to Nightingale following inheriting his great-uncle’s estate in 1815.)
Florence owes its name to the Italian city where she was born. Returning to England in 1821, the family led a comfortable life, dividing their time between two homes, one in Derbyshire, located in central England, and the second in warmer, south-central Hampshire. from England. Their home in Hampshire, a large and comfortable estate, became the family’s primary residence.
Florence was an intellectually promising child and her father took a particular interest in her education, guiding her through history, philosophy and literature. She excelled in mathematics and languages and was able to read and write in French, German, Italian, and Greek. Latin from a young age. She was never satisfied with traditional female skills in household management. She preferred to read eminent philosophers and engage in serious political and social discourse with her father.
Comment on the photo, Photo of Florence Nightingale’s house in Hampshire
At the age of sixteen, she felt called by God to work to alleviate human suffering, and nursing seemed like the right path to serving God and humanity. However, her attempts to gain training as a nurse were discouraged by her family, considered an inappropriate activity for a woman of her status, and required her to care for sick relatives and tenants of the family estate.
In peace and in war
Despite family reservations, Nightingale was eventually able to attend the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses in Kaisersfurth, Germany, for two weeks of training in July 1850 and once more for three months in July 1851, where she learned basic nursing skills and the importance of patient monitoring. the value of good hospital organization.
In 1853, Nightingale sought freedom from her home environment and considered becoming superintendent of nurses at King’s College Hospital, London. However, it was politics, not nursing experience, that determined her next move.
In October 1853, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, following a series of disputes over the holy sites in Jerusalem and Russian demands for protection of the Ottoman Sultan’s Orthodox subjects.
The British and French, allies of Turkey, sought to curb Russian expansion. Most of the Crimean War took place on the Crimean Peninsula, which belonged to Russia at the time of the war. However, a British troop base and hospitals were established to treat sick and wounded soldiers at Scutari, across the Bosphorus from Istanbul.
British journalist William Howard Russell, the first modern war correspondent, covered casualty care for the London Times. Newspapers reported that soldiers were being treated by an incompetent and inefficient medical facility and that most basic supplies were unavailable. This information provoked the British public, who protested once morest the treatment of the soldiers and demanded improvement in their conditions.
Sidney Herbert, the British Secretary of War, wrote to Nightingale asking her to lead a group of nurses to Scutari. Nightingale led an officially sanctioned group of 38 women, departing on 21 October 1854 and arriving in Scutari at the barracks hospital on 5 November.
Nightingale was not well received by medical officials and found the conditions around the wounded filthy, insufficient supplies, unhelpful staff, and severe overcrowding. Five days following his arrival in Scutari, the battle of Balaclava took place, then that of Inkerman, and the wounded invaded the hospital.
Comment on the photo, Painting of Nightingale speaking to an army officer at the barracks hospital in 1856
In order to properly care for soldiers, it was necessary to have adequate supplies. Nightingale purchased equipment with money provided by the London Times, the wards were cleaned and basic care was provided by nurses.
Most importantly, Nightingale established standards of care, requiring basic necessities such as bathing, clean clothing and bandages, and adequate food. Psychological needs were met by helping to write letters to loved ones and providing educational and recreational activities.
Nightingale herself roamed the wards at night offering support to patients, earning her the nickname “Lady of the Lamp”. I gained the respect of soldiers and the medical community. Her achievements in healthcare and reducing the mortality rate to around 2 percent made her famous in England through the press and letters from soldiers.
In May 1855, Nightingale undertook the first of many trips to the Crimea. However, shortly following her arrival, she fell ill with “Crimean fever” and most likely brucellosis, which she might have contracted from drinking contaminated milk. Nightingale experienced a slow recovery, as no effective treatment was available, and the residual effects of the illness lasted 25 years, often leaving her bedridden with severe chronic pain.
On March 30, 1856, the Treaty of Paris ended the Crimean War. She returned home to Derbyshire on 7 August 1856.
Statistics
With the support of Queen Victoria, who invited him to meet her at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, Nightingale helped establish a royal commission into army health in 1857. She employed the two principal statisticians in the army. At the time, William Farr and John Sutherland, to analyze the state of health of the army. mortality data. This is according to History.com.
What they found was shocking: 16,000 of the 18,000 deaths were from preventable illnesses, not combat.
Instead of lists or tables, she represented the number of deaths in a revolutionary way in which her “pink diagram” showed a sharp decline in the number of deaths. The chart was easy to understand and made complex data accessible to everyone, inspiring new sanitation standards in the military and beyond and driving home the military’s failures and the urgent need for change.
In light of his work, new departments of medicine, health sciences, and statistics were established in the military to improve health care. Nightingale became the first female fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and was made an honorary fellow of the American Statistical Association.
Comment on the photo, Photo of Florence on the front page of Times Illustrated magazine in 1856
Health care for all
Florence Nightingale was ill but wealthy and might afford private health care. But she knew that most people in Victorian Britain might not do the same.
Therefore, the poor might only take care of each other. Her notes on nursing were intended to educate people on ways to care for sick relatives and neighbors, but she always sought to help the poorest people in society and sent trained nurses into homes to help care those who were locked up. need. This attempt to make medical care easily accessible to all, regardless of class or income, was an early precursor to the National Health Service in Britain.
Nightingale became involved in improving the health of British troops in India since her experience at Scutari.
By the 1880s, scientific knowledge had advanced to further support her reformist ideas as she emphasized the need for an uncontaminated water supply for the Indian population. While continuing to collect data, she campaigned to combat famine and improve sanitary conditions to combat the high death toll which she believed was caused by conditions similar to those she had witnessed in Scutari. Nightingale continued to receive reports on the situation in India until 1906.
She loved cats and also had a pet owl named Athena. Nightingale died on August 13, 1910 in London, the British capital.
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