Florence Nightingale's Influence In Nursing

Florence Nightingale paved the way for nursing as a respected profession. Although her legacy is debated, indisputably without her, modern nursing would look significantly different. Nightingale felt a calling to serve mankind through the medical profession. Being part of the elite and wealthy social circle, her family did not support her decision. Their hesitance stemmed from the fact that in Victorian England nurses were known to be drunks and engage in immoral behavior (Cohen, 1984). Despite her family’s opposition Florence persevered and, at the age of 33, she finally became a nurse. Her career advanced rapidly, and she became a supervisor in her first few years. She had great interest in numbers and statistics, giving her a different …show more content…
There was widespread publicity of the effect her reforms in Crimea had on patient outcomes. The care and treatment of hospitalized patients was permanently reformed (Gill & Gill, 2005). Nightingale outlined “five essential components for optimal healing: pure air, pure water, efficient drainage, cleanliness and light” (Lee, Clark & Thompson, 2013, p. 245). These components are still relevant today and continue to break the chain of infection. Clean air and water notably decrease airborne and waterborne diseases. Efficient drainage is essentially important for the control of disease. Cleanliness, especially hand washing, is the number one way to prevent infection. Although lighting is a little more difficult to relate to infection, it can be related to health regarding falls or traffic accidents (Lee et al., 2013). Nightingale believed in the minimal use of hospitals because of the danger of nosocomial diseases. She believed in removing host susceptibility by making hospitals a last resort and making patient stays, when necessary, as short as possible (Mcdonald, 2003). Nightingale kept careful record of all of her recommendations, and they are still being utilized …show more content…
She kept detailed records on everything she encountered, going beyond recording the patient’s name and ailment to documenting every possible detail about the patient (Winkelstein, 2009). She saw the value in collecting all sorts of health data, even proposing adding health questions on the census which was put into effect at a later time (Mcdonald, 1998). Although it was never put into general practice, Nightingale and other physicians saw the need for a uniform collection of data in hospitals and she created a tool to do so. The categories of data collected