Florence Nightingale: The Lady of the Lamp and Pioneer of Modern Nursing

Getty Images The famous “Lady of the Lamp” picture appeared in the Illustrated London News on February 24, 1855

Walid Badran

BBC

The world celebrates International Nurses Day on 12 May each year in recognition of the tireless and valuable contribution of nurses to global health care and health security. This celebration comes on the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, who is 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 the British capital, London. She was a British nurse, social worker, and pioneer of modern nursing She also used statistics. This is according to the Encyclopædia Britannica.

A Palestinian nurse loses her husband while doing her work in Gaza

Corona Virus: How do nurses feel when they treat victims of the virus?

Nightingale was placed in charge of the care of British and Allied troops in Turkey during the Crimean War, where she spent long hours in the wards, and her nightly rounds providing personal care to the wounded established her icon her as the “Lady of the Lamp” as she walked among the wounded, caring for them while carrying torches.

Her efforts to formalize nursing education led to the establishment of the first science-based nursing school, the Nightingale School of Nursing, at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, which opened in 1860. She was a ‘ first woman to receive an Order of Merit in 1907.

Family and “God’s Calling”

Florence Nightingale was the second daughter of William Edward and Frances Nightingale. (William Edward’s original surname was Shore; he changed his name to Nightingale after inheriting his great-grandfather’s estate in 1815.)

Florence was named after the town in Italy where she was born. After returning to England in 1821, the family lived a comfortable life, dividing their time between two homes, one in Derbyshire, in central England, and the second in warmer Hampshire, located in south central England. Their house in Hampshire, a large and comfortable estate, became the main family residence.

Florence was a child of intellectual promise and her father took a special interest in her education, guiding her through history, philosophy and Latin literature at an early age. She was never satisfied with the traditional female skills in to manage a home.

Getty Images Photograph 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 to be the right path for her to serve God and humanity. – human However, her attempts to train as a nurse were discouraged by her family as an inappropriate activity for a woman of her status and she was left to care for sick relatives and tenants on the estate. family

In war and peace

Despite family reservations, Nightingale was finally able to attend a Protestant deaconess institute in Kaisersfurth, Germany, for two weeks of training in July 1850 and again for three months in July 1851, where ‘she learned basic nursing skills, and the value of good hospital organization.

In 1853, Nightingale sought freedom from her family environment and considered becoming superintendent of nurses at King’s College Hospital in London. However, it was politics, not nursing knowledge, that determined her next move.

In October 1853, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, following a series of disputes over the holy sites of Jerusalem and Russia’s demands for protection over the Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Sultan.

The British and the French, Türkiye’s allies, were trying to prevent the expansion of Russia. Most of the Crimean War was fought in the Crimean Peninsula, which belonged to Russia at the time of the war. However, a British troop base and hospitals were established to care for sick and wounded soldiers at Scutari across the Bosphorus from Istanbul.

British journalist William Howard Russell, the first modern war correspondent, covered the care of the wounded for the London Times. Newspaper reports said that the soldiers were treated with incompetent and ineffective medical facilities and that most basic supplies were not available. These reports encouraged the British public, who complained about the treatment of the soldiers and wanted to improve the situation.

Sidney Herbert, the British Secretary of War, wrote to Nightingale asking her to lead a group of nurses to Scutari. Nightingale led a group of 38 women with official permission, departing on 21 October 1854, and arriving in Scutari at the Barracks Hospital on 5 November.

Medical officers did not welcome Nightingale, and found the conditions around the wounded to be filthy, undersupplied, unaided workers, and overcrowded. Five days after arriving in Scutari, the Battle of Balaclava took place, then the Battle of Inkerman, and the wounded attacked the hospital.

Getty Images Photograph of Nightingale speaking to a military officer at the Barracks Hospital in 1856

To properly care for the soldiers, adequate supplies were needed. Nightingale bought equipment with money donated by the London Times, and the wards were cleaned and nurses provided basic care.

Most importantly, Nightingale established standards of care, which required basic requirements such as a bath, clean clothes and bandages, and adequate food. Psychological needs were taken care of by helping to write letters to relatives and by providing educational and recreational activities.

Nightingale herself would roam the wards at night assisting patients, earning her the nickname “Lady of the Lamp”. I have earned the respect of soldiers and the medical establishment alike. Her achievements in providing care and reducing the mortality rate to around 2 percent made her famous in England through the media and soldiers’ letters.

In May 1855, Nightingale embarked on the first of many trips to the Crimea, but, shortly after her arrival, she fell ill with “Crimean Fever” and most likely brucellosis, which could from drinking contaminated milk. Nightingale had a slow recovery, as no effective treatment was available, and the lingering effects of the disease lasted for 25 years, often resulting in her being bedridden with chronic pain.

On March 30, 1856, the Treaty of Paris ended the Crimean War. She returned to her home in Derbyshire on August 7, 1856.

Statistics

With the support of Queen Victoria, who invited her to meet her at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, Nightingale helped set up a Royal Commission on the Health of the Army in 1857. She recruited the two leading statisticians of the day, William Ferguson and John Sutherland, to study the army’s mortality data. This is according to History.com.

What they found was shocking: 16,000 of the 18,000 deaths were due to preventable diseases, not battles.

Instead of lists or charts, she represented the death toll in a revolutionary way in which her “Pink Digram” showed a dramatic decline in the number of deaths. The chart was easy to understand and made complex data accessible to everyone, promoting new standards for sanitation in the military and beyond and public understanding of the military’s failings and urgent need for change.

As a result of her work, new departments of medicine, health sciences, and statistics were created in the military to improve health care. Nightingale was the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society and was appointed an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.

Getty Images: Florence on the front page of the Times Illustrated Magazine in 1856

Health care for all

Florence Nightingale was sick but wealthy, and could afford private health care. But she knew that most people in British Victoria could not do the same.

So the poor could only care for each other. need This effort to make medical care accessible to everyone, regardless of class or income, was an early precursor to Britain’s National Health Service.

Nightingale has been involved in working to improve the health of British soldiers in India since her experience at Scutari.

By the 1880s, scientific knowledge had advanced to further support her reformist views as she emphasized the need for an unpolluted water supply for the people of India. As she continued to collect data, she campaigned for famine relief and better sanitary conditions to combat the high death toll she believed was caused by conditions similar to those she had witnessed. at Scutari. Nightingale continued to receive reports on conditions in India until 1906.

She loved cats and had a pet owl named Athena. Nightingale died on August 13, 1910, in the capital of Great Britain, London.

Responsibility for news: The Cedar News website is not responsible for the form or content of this news, and reflects only the opinion of the source or writer.