Florence Nightingale's Invaluable Contribution in Nusring Care Plan
Florence Nightingale is the most recognized name in the field of nursing. Her work was instrumental for developing modern nursing practice and from her first shift, she worked to ensure patients in her care had what they needed to get healthy. Her environmental theory changed the face of nursing to create sanitary conditions for patients to get care.
Florence Nightingale tended to wounded soldiers during the Crimean war. She became known as the “Lady with the lamp” because of her night rounds. While doing nursing soldiers during the war nightingale worked to improve nutrition and condition in the wards. Many injured soldiers were dying from illnesses separate from their injuries, such as typhoid , cholera, and dysentery. Nightingale made changes on the wards or started the process by calling the sanitary commission. Her work led to a reduction in the death rates of injured soldiers from 42% to 2%. Moreover, Nightingale believed the deaths were the result of poor nutrition , inadequate supplies, and the soldiers being dramatically overworked. After collecting evidence that pointed to unsanitary conditions as a major cause of death. She also worked to improve sanitation in army and civilian hospitals during peace time.
Florence Nightingale is attributed with establishing the modern practice of nursing. She contributed to the field with nursing theories still used today. One of her nursing theories is the environmental theory which incorporates the patient’s surrounding environment in his or her nursing care plan. In this theory the role of the nurse is to use the patient’s environment to help him or her recover and get back to the usual environment. The reason the patient’s environment is important is because it can affect his or her health in a positive or negative way. Some environmental factors affecting health according to nightingale’s theory are fresh air, pure water, sufficient food and appropriate nutrition , efficient drainage. In notes on nursing: what it is and what it is not, Florence Nightingale established the first nursing philosophy based on health maintenance and restoration. She saw the role of nursing as having “ charge of somebody’s health ” based on the knowledge of how to put the body in such a state to be free of disease or to recover from disease. During the same year she developed the first organized programme for training nurses, the nightingale training school for nurses at st.thomas hospital in London.
Nightingale was the first practicing nurse epidemiologist. Her statistical analysis connected poor sanitation with cholera and dysentery. She volunteered during the Crimean war in 1853 and travelled the battelefield hospitals at night carrying her lamp; thus she was known as the “lady with the lamp”. The sanitary nutrition and basic facilities in the battlefield hospitals were poor at best. Eventually she was given the task to organize and improve the quality of the sanitation facilities. As aresult the mortality rate at the barracks hospital in Scutari, Turkey, was reduced from 42.7% to 2.2% in six months.
As a conclusion, Florence Nightingale is often considered the founder of modern nursing. As the first nursing theorist, her philosophy of patients' treatment is greatly known in medicine and is a base for creating appropriate nursing care plan.
