Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was a British nurse who reformed the sanitary conditions in hospitals. She is considered to be the founder of modern nursing. She is also known as “the lady with the lamp” since she used to make her rounds around the patients in the evenings usually carrying a lamp. This name was given by the patients, as they were grateful for her attention towards them, and in the Crimean War, she was even called “the angel of the Crimea” for her kindness and hard work.
Florence was also a statistician and helped the other statisticians of the army to count the number of deaths and their causes, finding out that over the 18 thousand deaths, 16 thousand were from preventable diseases. What did that mean? Something needed to change in how were things done mostly at hospitals. Thus, she developed a diagram that was later known as the “Nightingale Rose Diagram” where she showed how the Sanitary Commission’s work could help decrease the death rate, inspiring new standards for sanitation in the army and beyond. By her amazing job, she became the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society and was named an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.
In 1860 she founded the establishment of St. Thomas’ Hospital and in it, the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. She committed her life to researching health services and, among its topics, hygiene was of great importance. Thanks to her hard work, she reformed healthcare influencing its quality of care in the 19 and 20 centuries.
Bibliography:
https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/florence-nightingale-1
https://mujeresconciencia.com/2017/08/22/florence-nightingale-mucho-mas-la-dama-la-lampara/
https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/n/nightingale.htm