Florence Nightingale: Patient Hygienic Care

During the 1800s if you were admitted to the hospital, you had barley a 50% chance of surviving. A majority of the time you went into the hospital with a minor illness and died as a result of an infection that you contracted while you were in the hospital. Hospitals were run in unsanitary conditions and usually placed in areas of cities or towns that were unhealthy. Diseases and infections contracted at hospitals were often the result of poor unsanitary conditions in the hospital. Rats, mice and other rodents generally ran around hospitals and spread diseases that led to most deaths. Patient Hygienic care was not at the four fronts of hospitals concerns. “Nurses were viewed as lowly menial labor by the upper social classes.” Florence Nightingale …show more content…
Florence and her sister were both named after cities in Italy. However, she was from an affluent British family. Her mother came from a family of merchants who were well respected and her father was from a family of wealthy landowners in England. Soon after her birth, the family moved back to England and stayed on one of her father’s two estates. Florence was homeschooled by her father in a classical education format that included learning German, French, and Italian. These languages taught to her by her father would be proved valuable to her, as she got older. At the age of 16, Florence decided that she wanted to pursue nursing as a career. This career path was highly against her mother’s wishes. Florence being a determined teenager butted heads with her mother over this and still continued to pursue the profession she wanted. “In 1844, Nightingale enrolled as a nursing student at the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Fliedner in Germany.” This was significant because it was far away from London and far away from her parent’s dissatisfaction. This was the beginning of the training of a new woman that would transform nursing and healthcare during the 19th