Florence Nightingale's Influence On Change In Nursing

Register to read the introduction… She thought of it as unfair that women did not have the same opportunities as men. As she grew up she became very fond of looking after the ill and became interested in the work of hospitals, which led to her visiting hospitals in London to investigate the occupations for women there8. Her visits lasted for eleven years. On a journey from Paris she met two St. Vincent de Paul sisters. They introduced her to their convent at Alexandria9, which she visited and saw how well organised these sisters were compared to nurses in England. However it was her visit to the Deaconess Institute at Kaiserworth that gave her the inspiration to make nursing a vocation for women. Where she spent four months training as a sick nurse in 185110. On her return to England she was determined to change the nursing profession. ‘She herself saw her mission in larger terms: to serve humanity through the prevention of needless illness and …show more content…
This is where Florence excelled in nursing and received the famous title ‘Lady with the lamp’. This is also where she started collecting and collating statistics in order to show that cleaner hospitals caused fewer deaths, ‘Nightingale recognized that reliable data on the incidence of preventable deaths in the military made compelling arguments for reform’13 after that she continued to use statistics in helping her arguments about health reform, Nightingale saw it as the best way to win them. Statistics were not usually used at that time but Florence understood the power of diagrams and pictograms in giving impact and a clear understanding of number, at a time when many were illiterate. This made her arguments much more …show more content…
Source D is an illustrated picture of Florence in Scutari wit the iconic ‘lamp’ and her caring for soldiers. Source E is a picture of one of the wards in her training school at St Thomas’ Hospital. Comparing these two images you the colossal change between them. In the wards in Scutari it was dark, no ventilation, no windows for light or air and all the beds were so close together. You can see from source D why there was a lot of spread of disease amongst the soldiers. However source E is completely different. All the beds are spaced out, with plenty of windows, lots of ventilation and even plants to create fresh air. The patients are in proper beds with plenty of nurses attending to them, where as in source D there is only Florence – she was the only nurse to work late at night – and the soldiers are not in proper beds. Whether this is a factual portrayal of the barracks in Scutari is uncertain as source D is just an illustration but we must rely on it as it is the only way to see what conditions were like in Scutari and in doing that see the differences compared to hospitals today. Although Florence is not solely responsible for bringing about these changes, she plays a big part in it because she did push very hard in order to make changes to not only the nursing system but also the whole medicine profession in general. She did all of this by making very valid and convincing arguments whilst, of course, using lots of