Throughout time, there have been many nurses that have made positive impacts on the nursing profession. One of these nurses is Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820 in London, England and died on August 13, 1910. She was well known as the “Lady with the Lamp”. During her time, nursing was seen as a disreputable profession and cleanliness was not a priority. Florence Nightingale helped reform hospital sanitation and changed the view of nursing by improving nurse's training methods.
In the nineteenth century, nursing was completely different compared to how it is it today. Even though a majority of nurses were well needed at this time, nurses were not respected. Nursing was left to “those who were too old, too weak, …show more content…
During this time, many soldiers were getting sick and wounded, and diseases were starting to spread. This increased the need for nurses. The Civil War “served as the beginning of moving the profession from the home to the hospital and clinic” (Weatherford, n.d.). In the 1850s, Florence Nightingale was called to help tend to injured soldiers in the Crimean War. It is here, where she seen that “due to the lack of general hygiene and the huge amount of fatal infections that resulted from these wounds”, the death toll was high (Landers, 2016). Nurses were not being taught about nursing through books or classes, but instead they learned through observation and experience. Joseph Catalano, author of Nursing Now! Today's Issues, Tomorrow's Trends, states that “students learned exclusively by hands-on experience during their 12- to 14-hour, 7-day-a-week work shifts” (Catalano, 2015). Florence Nightingale’s life was devoted to her effort in improving health care and nursing standards (Catalano, …show more content…
From “writing books on nursing and women’s rights” to making “nursing an admirable profession for women”, Nightingale’s name will forever live on (Gable, 2014). Two significant contributions Florence Nightingale made to nursing were that she improved hospital sanitation conditions, as well as, improved nursing education standards. When Nightingale was sent to help the soldiers during the Crimean War, she found that “ten times more soldiers were dying of diseases such as typhus, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery than from battle wounds” (Fee & Garofalo, 2010). After seeing that hygiene was being neglected, she went out and bought numerous amounts of new, clean items such as towels, shirts, utensils, and many other essential needs for these wounded and sick soldiers. Florence Nightingale and her group of nurses cleaned the kitchens and the hospital wards. She realized there was a connection between sanitation and mortality rates. By improving sanitation and the hospital conditions, death rates decreased. After this knowledge, Florence Nightingale “advocated for sanitary living conditions for patients, as well as providing similar designs to be implemented within hospitals” (Sayles,