Florence nightingale

• Before Florence Nightingale, nursing had little status and training, hospitals were cramped and diseases spread quickly, and nurses had a bad reputation as being drunk and unprofessional
• In the 19th century, attitudes towards the role of hospitals were beginning to change - they were seen less as places of care and more as places of cure
• Problems with hospitals before Nightingale

  • Little funding
  • Nurses had little status and training
  • Wealthy preferred to be treated at home
  • Hospitals were cramped
  • Diseases spread quickly
  • Wards were rarely properly cleaned
  • Toilet facilities were bad
• Before the 1860s, nurses were not trained and people did not respect them
• Inferences from the "Nurse Old Style" cartoon

  • People had little respect for nurses before Nightingale
  • Nurses were seen as unprofessional - portrayed as old, lazy, without uniform or equipment
• Britain went to war with Russia in the Crimean War


  1854
• News reports said the hospitals in Crimea were not fit for soldiers, leading to a national outcry and Nightingale being sent to improve the hospitals
• Changes Nightingale made in Crimean War hospitals

  1. Demanded 300 scrubbing brushes to get rid of dirt

  2. Organized nurses to treat 2,000 wounded soldiers

  3. Provided clean bedding and good meals
• Nightingale's efforts in Crimea

  Mortality rate dropped from 40% to 2%
• Nightingale returned to Britain in 1856 as a national hero, which gave her credibility to make changes to hospitals in Britain
• Nightingale's impact on hospital design and nurse training in Britain

  • Preferred Pavilion plan hospitals with improved ventilation, large rooms, and isolation wards
  • Wrote "Notes on Nursing" in 1859 setting out the role of nurses
  • Established the Nightingale School for nurses at St Thomas's Hospital in 1860, training them in sanitation and cleanliness
• Nightingale's reforms made nursing a more respectable occupation, attracting middle-class women rather than just working-class women
• By 1900, hospitals had separate wards for infectious patients, operating theatres, and specialist departments, with cleanliness being of utmost importance
• Nightingale was a believer in the miasma theory, but her focus on cleanliness would have helped once germ theory came around
• By 1900, doctors were a common sight in hospitals, with junior doctors getting more hands-on experience, and hospitals had become places of treatment rather than just rest
• Cottage hospitals and voluntary hospitals started providing more affordable healthcare options, but the poor and disabled still often had to rely on workhouse infirmaries
• Florence Nightingale was a fiercely intelligent and determined woman who revolutionized nursing and hospitals, despite the myth of her as an angelic "lady with the lamp"