Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy on May 12, 1820. She was named after the city of her birth. Her father, William E. Nightingale, was a wealthy landowner who had inherited an estate in Derbyshire, England. Similar to many members of the wealthy class, He and Florence's mother dedicated themselves to the pursuit of active social lives which explains her wellknown attributions as a social reformer. Florence and her sister were tutored by their father in languages, mathematics, and history. Although Florence was tempted by the idea of a social life and marriage, she also wanted to achieve independence, importance in some field of activity, and obedience to God through service to society.
In 1844 Nightingale decided that she wanted to work in hospitals. Her family objected strongly to her plan as hospital conditions at that time were known to be terrible, and nurses were untrained and thought to be of questionable morals. Ignoring all resistance, Nightingale managed to visit some hospitals and health facilities. She then received permission from her parents to spend a few months at Kaiserworth, a German training school for nurses and female teachers. In 1853 she became superintendent of the London Institution for Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances. This opportunity allowed her to become independent from her family and also to try out new ideas in organizing and managing an institution, conducted in a scientific, non religious setting.
Even in her early life, Florence would find it necessary to help the sick people in her community. As the years went on Florence realized nursing was her future because it was her divine purpose. Her parents were not enthused by her plans to become a nurse and even prohibited her to pursue nursing as a career because in this time period, it was frowned upon of a woman with her social background to become a nurse. It was actually in the rights for her to marry a man of means, but when Florence was seventeen she declined to marry the man who offered her hand in marriage. She had her reasons for not accepting the proposal, she knew she did not have time for a marriage at this time in her life because she was motivated to becoming a nurse.
In the early 1850s, Nightingale returned to London, where she took a nursing job in a Harley Street hospital. Her performance there impressed her employer that Nightingale was promoted to superintendent. Nightingale also volunteered at a Middlesex hospital around this time, fighting with with a cholera outbreak and unsanitary conditions conducive to the rapid spread of the disease. Nightingale made it her mission to improve hygiene practices, significantly lowering the death rate at the hospital in the process which is something she is notable for today. In October of 1853, the Crimean War broke out. Allied British and French forces were at war against the Russian Empire for control of Ottoman territory. Thousands of British soldiers were sent to the Black Sea, where supplies quickly dwindled. By 1854, no fewer than 18,000 soldiers had been admitted into military hospitals.
At the time, there were no female nurses stationed at hospitals in the Crimea. After the Battle of Alma, England was in an uproar about the neglect of their ill and injured soldiers, who not only lacked sufficient medical attention due to hospitals being horribly understaffed but also languished in appallingly unsanitary conditions.
In late 1854, Nightingale received a letter from Secretary of War Sidney Herbert, asking her to organize a group of nurses to care to the sick and fallen soldiers in the Crimean war. She was given fulll control of the operation, she quickly assembled a team of almost three dozen nurses from a variety of religious orders and sailed with them to the Crimea just a few days later. She spent many hours in the wards, and her night rounds giving personal care to the wounded which gave her the famous nickname “Lady with the Lamp.”" Others simply called her "the Angel of the Crimea." Because her work reduced the hospital’s death rate by two-thirds.
Although they had been warned of the horrid conditions there, nothing could have prepared Nightingale and her nurses for what they saw when they arrived at Scutari, the British base hospital. The hospital contained contaminated water and the building itself being in horrible conditions. Patients lay in their own excrement on stretchers strewn throughout the hallways. Rodents and bugs roaming the hallways constantly. The most basic supplies, such as bandages and soap, grew increasingly scarce as the number of ill and wounded increased. Even water needed to be rationed. More soldiers were dying from infectious diseases like typhoid and cholera than from injuries incurred in battle. Nightingale quickly set to work. She procured hundreds of scrub brushes and asked the least infirm patients to scrub the inside of the hospital from floor to ceiling. Nightingale herself spent every waking minute caring for the soldiers.
In addition to vastly improving the sanitary conditions of the hospital, Nightingale instituted an "invalid's kitchen" according to The Florence Nightingale Nursing Bibliography, where appealing food for patients with special dietary requirements was prepared. She also established a laundry room so that patients would have clean clothes. As well as a classroom and library for intellectual stimulation and entertainment.
Nightingale remained at Scutari for a year and a half. She left in the summer of 1856, once the Crimean conflict was resolved, and returned to her childhood home at Lea Hurst. She was met with a hero's welcome while being extremely humble.Although primarily remembered for her accomplishments during the Crimean War, Nightingale’s greatest achievements centred on attempts to create social reform in health care and nursing. On her return to England, Nightingale was suffering the effects of both brucellosis and exhaustion. In September 1856 she met with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to discuss the need for reform of the British military establishment. Nightingale kept meticulous records regarding the running of the Barrack Hospital, causes of illness and death, the efficiency of the nursing and medical staffs, and difficulties in purveyance. A Royal Commission was established, which based its findings on the statistical data and analysis provided by Nightingale. The result was marked reform in the military medical and purveyance systems according to her bibliography.
. Queen Victoria had rewarded Nightingale's work by presenting her with an engraved brooch that came to be known as the "Nightingale Jewel" and by granting her a prize of $250,000 from the British government. Nightingale was the first woman to be awarded the “Order of Merit”. Nightingale decided to use the money to further her cause. In 1860, she funded the establishment of St. Thomas' Hospital, and within it, the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. Nightingale became a figure of public admiration .For these reasons she is considered the foundational philosopher of modern nursing. Poems, songs and plays were written and dedicated in the heroine's honor. Young women aspired to be like her. Eager to follow her example, even women from the wealthy upper classes started enrolling at the training school. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no longer frowned upon by the upper classes…, in fact, come to be viewed as an honorable vocation.
Based on her observations during the Crimean War, Nightingale wrote Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army, a detailed report published in 1858 analyzing her experience and proposing reforms for other military hospitals. Her research would spark a total restructuring of the War Office's administrative department, including the establishment of a Royal Commission for the Health of the Army in 1857. Nightingale was also noted for her statistician skills, creating “coxcomb pie charts” on patient mortality in Scutari that would influence the direction of medical epidemiology which are still used today.
While at Scutari, Nightingale had contracted the bacterial infection brucellosis, also known as Crimean fever, and would never fully recover. By the time she was 38 years old, she was homebound and routinely bedridden, and would be so for the remainder of her long life. Fiercely determined and dedicated as ever to improving health care and alleviating patients’ suffering, Nightingale continued her work from her bed.
Residing in Mayfair, she remained an authority and advocate of health care reform, interviewing politicians and welcoming distinguished visitors from her bed. In 1859, she published Notes on Hospitals, which focused on how to properly run civilian hospitals. Which is again something she is widely accredited for. Throughout the U.S. Civil War, she was frequently consulted about how to best manage field hospitals. Nightingale also served as an authority on public sanitation issues in India for both the military and civilians, although she had never been to India herself.
In 1907, she was conferred the Order of Merit by King Edward as previously mentioned and received the Freedom of the City of London the following year, becoming the first woman to receive the honor. In May of 1910, she received a celebratory message from King George on her 90th birthday.
In August 1910, Florence Nightingale fell ill, but seemed to recover and was reportedly in good spirits. A week later, on the evening of Friday, August 12, 1910, she developed troubling symptoms. She died unexpectedly at around 2 p.m. the following day, Saturday, August 13, at her home in London.
She had expressed the desire that her funeral be a quiet and modest affair, despite the public's desire to honor Nightingale who tirelessly devoted her life to preventing disease and ensuring safe and compassionate treatment for the poor and the suffering. Respecting her last wishes, her relatives turned down a national funeral. The "Lady with the Lamp" was laid to rest in her family's plot at St. Margaret's Church, East Wellow, in Hampshire, England.
The Florence Nightingale Museum, which sits at the site of the original Nightingale Training School for Nurses, houses more than 2,000 artifacts commemorating the life and career of the "Angel of the Crimea." According to another Florence Nightingale bibliography. To this day, Florence Nightingale is broadly acknowledged and revered as the pioneer of modern nursing.
In other words, To summarize. She improved hospitals. Nightingale helped improve hospitals and still influences their modern design. As a nurse in the Crimean War, she took notice of the dirtiness and deterioration of the military hospitals. By making sanitary improvements and establishing standards for clean and safe hospitals, she helped bring down the death rate for soldiers being treated in them. In her book Notes on Hospitals she explained how they could be improved by increasing ventilation, adding windows, improving drainage, and increasing space
Before Florence Nightingale, nursing was not considered a respectable profession. With the exception of nuns, the women who worked as nurses were often ill-trained and poorly disciplined. Most were working-class. Florence was determined to encourage educated, 'respectable' women into nursing. Her work in the Crimea set the standards for modern nursing and helped transform its public image. Nightingale essentially established the profession. Before she came along, nurses considered their jobs to be unimportant and of low-status, as they were untrained and were not taught about nursing, but learned through experience. Nightingale’s efforts turned nursing into a respectable profession raising the standards by incorporating education and responsibilities into the job. Nurses were no longer looked down upon, but became respected and appreciated.