A BRIEF HISTORY OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

One hundred and fifty years later, Florence Nightingale’s work still stands as a wonderful example for all healthcare workers, conventional and complementary, of empathy and professionalism. It’s great that we have such a well-remembered national hero.

Florence came from a liberal family, and her father had been active in the abolition movement. Nevertheless, when she told her family that she wanted to be a nurse, they were horrified. At that stage, nurses had a bad, not necessarily justified, reputation for dishonesty, drunkeness, and dirtiness. In 1854, she was asked by the government to take a group of nurses to the Crimea during the war. Her experiences here shaped her future work.

Once she was back home, she campaigned enthusiastically to improve standards of healthcare and to make nursing a respectable profession for women. In 1860, she opened the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, where nurses wore uniforms and were not allowed alcohol or to sleep overnight on the wards.

She became interested in all aspects of health, including diet, from what might now be called a holistic perspective. She advised on the rebuilding of St Thomas’ with high windows on the wards to circulate air rather than draughts and separate buidlings to prevent contagious spread and to facilitate ventilation. She wrote extensively on health reforms.

The Crimean war was the first major conflict to be recorded in the emerging press, and Florence’s endeavours there had made her famous as the ‘Lady with the Lamp’. Songs and poems were written about her. Today, she remains an icon of compassionate nursing care and advocate of pioneering health policies.