Who is florence nightingale

At home in England, the Nightingales divided their time between two houses, Lea Hurst in Derbyshire for the summer and Embley in Hampshire for the winter. The two girls were educated by their father, and Florence, in particular, excelled academically.

With regard to the marriage and social life of their daughters, the Nightingales held high expectations. Nurses in those days were typically poor, unskilled and often associated with immoral behavior 1.

The hospitals they served held equally low reputations as unclean, disorderly, and infection breeding. They were often regarded merely as places to die. In Nightingale went for additional training in Paris with the Sisters of Mercy 3. Click here to view a letter written by Florence Nightingale to a Mrs.

Bust of Florence Nightingale, presented to her by the soldiers after the Crimean War Florence Nightingale is probably most famous for her work during the Crimean War Responding to unpopular newspaper reports of the horrendous situation in the English war camp hospitals, Secretary of War Sidney Herbert, a personal friend of Nightingale, consented to let her organize and manage a group of female nurses to go to Turkey.

On November 4, , Nightingale and 38 nurses arrived in Scutari, the location of the British camp outside Constantinople. The doctors originally did not welcome the incoming female nurses, but as the number of patients escalated, their help was needed in the overcrowded, undersupplied, and unsanitary hospital 4. However, she continued to advocate for safe nursing practices until her death.

Although Florence Nightingale died on August 13th, at the age of 90, her legacy continues. Two years after her death, the International Committee of the Red Cross created the Florence Nightingale Medal, that is given to excellent nurses every two years. Also, International Nurses Day has been celebrated on her birthday since Fee, Elizabeth, and Mary E Garofalo. Reynolds-Finley Historical Library. Accessed May 1, The Florence Nightingale Museum.

The National Archives. National Women's History Museum, Date accessed. Chicago - Alexander, Kerri Lee. National Geographic Kids. Florence Nightingale Her tutors included Sylvester , who developed the theory of invariants with Cayley.

Nightingale was said to be Sylvester 's most distinguished pupil. Lessons included learning arithmetic, geometry and algebra and prior to Nightingale entered nursing, she spent time tutoring children in these subjects. Nightingale's interest in mathematics extended beyond the subject matter. One of the people who also influenced Nightingale was the Belgian scientist Quetelet.

He had applied statistical methods to data from several fields, including moral statistics or social sciences. Religion played an important part in Nightingale's life. Her unbiased view on religion, unusual at the time, was owed to the liberal outlook Nightingale found in her home. Although her parents were from a Unitarian background, Frances Nightingale found a more conventional denomination preferable and the girls were brought up as members of the Church of England.

On 7 February Nightingale believed she heard her calling from God, whilst walking in the garden at Embley, although at this time though she did not know what this calling was.

Nightingale developed an interest in the social issues of the time, but in her family was firmly against the suggestion of Nightingale gaining any hospital experience.

Until then the only nursing that she had done was looking after sick friends and relatives. During the mid-nineteenth century nursing was not considered a suitable profession for a well-educated woman. Nurses of the time were lacking in training and they also had the reputation of being coarse, ignorant women, given to promiscuity and drunkenness. While Nightingale was on a tour of Europe and Egypt starting in , with family friends Charles and Selina Bracebridge, she had the chance to study the different hospital systems.

Nightingale returned to Kaiserswerth, in , to undertake 3 months of nursing training at the Institute for Protestant Deaconesses and from Germany she moved to a hospital in St Germain, near Paris, run by the Sisters of Mercy. Although the Russians were defeated at the battle of the Alma River, on 20 September , The Times newspaper criticised the British medical facilities.

In response to this Nightingale was asked in a letter from her friend Sidney Herbert, the British Secretary for War, to become a nursing administrator to oversee the introduction of nurses to military hospitals. Nightingale arrived in Scutari, an Asian suburb of Constantinople, now Istanbul , with 38 nurses on 4 November [ 2 ] She went steadily and unwearyingly about her work with a judgement, a self-sacrifice, a courage, a tender sympathy, and withal a quiet and unostentatious demeanour that won the hearts of all who were not prevented by official prejudices from appreciating the nobility of her work and character.

The most basic supplies, such as bandages and soap, grew increasingly scarce as the number of ill and wounded steadily increased. Even water needed to be rationed. More soldiers were dying from infectious diseases like typhoid and cholera than from injuries incurred in battle. The no-nonsense 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 the evenings she moved through the dark hallways carrying a lamp while making her rounds, ministering to patient after patient. In additional to vastly improving the sanitary conditions of the hospital , Nightingale created a number of patient services that contributed to improving the quality of their hospital stay.

She established a laundry so that patients would have clean linens. Based on her observations in the Crimea, Nightingale wrote Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army , an page report analyzing her experience and proposing reforms for other military hospitals operating under poor conditions.

Nightingale remained at Scutari for a year and a half. She left in the summer of , once the Crimean conflict was resolved, and returned to her childhood home at Lea Hurst. With the support of Queen Victoria, Nightingale helped create a Royal Commission into the health of the army. It employed leading statisticians of the day, William Farr and John Sutherland, to analyze army mortality data, and what they found was horrifying: 16, of the 18, deaths were from preventable diseases—not battle.

She became the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society and was named an honorary member of the American Statistical Association. Nightingale decided to use the money to further her cause. In , she funded the establishment of St. Nightingale became a figure of public admiration. 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; it had, in fact, come to be viewed as an honorable vocation.

By the time she was 38 years old, she was homebound and bedridden, and would be so for the remainder of her life. Residing in Mayfair, she remained an authority and advocate of health care reform, interviewing politicians and welcoming distinguished visitors from her bed.

In , she published Notes on Hospitals , which focused on how to properly run civilian hospitals.