I remember encountering that name when I was a sick child and one of the nurses who took care of me told me about her. But I didn't quite knew who she is until I became a nursing student. So, let me share a bit of her.
Florence Nightingale was born in Italy in 1820. She came from a modest background and was home-schooled by her father, a professor at Cambridge. She attended Kaiserwerth for her nursing training, responding to a cause that she felt compelled to follow since she was seventeen.
She was further inspired to neglect the social convention of marriage when she met Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor. She completed her nursing training with her father's blessing, and was taken on by the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses and was later made the lady superintendent at a London hospital for invalid women.
Because of Russia's invading of Turkey, France and Britain decided to intervene and offer their support. Known as the Crimean War, this 1853 decision would prove to be a time where nursing was an absolute necessity in order to keep the soldiers ready for battle. British soldiers were suffering from malaria and cholera within weeks of entering the battlefield.
Upon hearing of this epidemic, Florence Nightingale offered her services to the army as well as bringing along over 30 additional nurses. When they arrived in Scutari, it became apparent why the soldiers were dying or becoming infected so rapidly. The conditions were putrid and the rates of infection sky high. It was common to have soldiers die of infections before dying of actual war wounds.
Nightingale resisted the opposition to changing the military standards of care and forged ahead to improve the sanitation of the hospital wards. Returning in 1856 to England, Nightingale was a new hero for the country, but her work was not done yet. After seeing the horrid conditions for the soldiers, she pressed for increased training of nurses and doctors.
At the close of the war in 1860, with a fund raised in tribute to her services, Nightingale founded the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses at St Thomas's Hospital, London. The opening of this school marked the beginning of professional education in nursing.
