![]() The Florence Nightingale syndrome was named after her because of her deep passion for the profession and caring for her patients 1 2 3. Ironically Florence Nightingale never actually fell in love with any of her patients 1 2 3. Nightingale brought cleanliness and respect to patients in hospitals and in collaboration with Elizabeth Blackwell opened the first school of nursing in England in 1869. Her findings and observations in her 1860 “Notes on Nursing: What it is, what it is not” later became a foundation for nursing education. Throughout the years Nightingale revolutionized the nursing profession. Nightingale however was caring and, to the dismay of her family, became a nurse against their wishes. People have thus come to misuse the term Florence Nightingale Effect or Syndrome to describe a situation where a nurse falls in love or develops a romantic. Nursing was for poor people of lower class families. Florence Nightingale was from an upper-class family and in those days people in her echelon would not be a nurse 1 2 3. We believe that she would be a proud defender of the NHS.As the nursing profession developed through the 1800s Florence Nightingale was a driving force behind it 1 2 3. She is also reputed to have been fierce in her determination, insisting nurses washed their hands. The story goes that she took a hammer one night to the medical stores to access supplies needed by the soldiers that she had previously been denied by officers. She was the first person to set up a triage system in the army whereby soldiers were treated according to need and urgency, rather than rank. She also dealt with inadequate supplies, overworked and uncooperative staff, and a death rate of over 40 percent. Another key achievement was her influence on the 1875 Public Health Act, which brought in effective sanitation to major towns and cities and gave control to local authorities.Īlthough she came from a very privileged background, Florence fought hard to see everyone gain the health benefits from clean drinking water and effective sewerage. In her most seminal work, which she wrote while bed bound, she used what we would now call informatics – graphic representational diagrams to show the transmission of infection and disease - which had a huge impact. I think we can say in Sheffield that she’s a local lassįlorence’s legacy includes not only her extensive use of data as evidence, but she used the pie chart and other visual representations to present her findings. Florence saw that transmission was taking place between people and she made the life-saving observation that hand-washing was the most important thing to prevent this. She identified that effective waste disposal and clean running water was essential, alongside frequent hand-washing.Īt that time bacteria were not fully understood and viruses were not even recognised. Human waste was dumped behind the hospitals. Florence helped the army to develop the policies and the training to implement them and then transferred this practice to civilian life. Her recording of data led her to conclude that if you were a soldier wounded on the battlefield, you were better staying there.”Īny patient in the army hospital ran the risk of picking up many diseases as there was no sanitation or ventilation. She is clearly associated with nursing, and rightly so, but she developed the concept of trained people delivering nursing care”.Īt that time, nursing was looked down on by society, so much so that it was even compared to prostitution. ![]() She was a campaigner, a data scientist, a public health nurse. But Ian feels this does not do justice to the remarkable woman she was, particularly in the Victorian era.“ This year as part of Sheffield ME and Fibromyalgia Group’s #MillionsMissing event the group’s chair, Carolyn Leary, interviewed Ian Carey, a local nurse with a keen interest in the story of Florence Nightingale.Florence is often thought of as ‘the lady with the lamp’ who tended wounded soldiers during the Crimean War and watched over them day and night. The date is commemorated annually as International Nurses Day, International Day for CFS/ME (chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis) and also for Fibromyalgia. 200 years ago the birth of Florence Nightingale on marked the start of the life of a remarkable woman who changed the face of nursing, health care and sanitation.
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