Nightingale-Notes On Nursing Essay

Insight and knowledge is required in nursing. In this assignment, I describe my beliefs about nursing, with reference to my textbook, Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is not (Nightingale, 1860/1969). I will explain the purpose for writing the book, the concepts and issues I attempted to articulate, and their importance to nursing past and present. I will begin by discussing my background and qualifications, and the assumptions and recommendations I made in the book. I wrote this book after reflecting on my professional and personal experiences and my lifelong commitment to the nursing profession, in which I wanted to organise and improve the delivery of nursing care.
Background
I was born in Florence, Italy on May 12, 1820, and named after the city, hence my name Florence Nightingale. I grew up in England, and my parents were wealthy and well educated; we had several residences. I was educated by my father, who studied at Cambridge University, and spoke seven languages. I also studied mathematics, philosophy, religion, and statistics and became the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society. I believed that God was calling me for a career in nursing, and when I was 31-years old, my family reluctantly agreed to my being trained as a nurse. Nurses in Britain at that time were seen as being in a lowly profession, comprised mainly of uneducated, working class girls, who were often depicted as drunk, debauched, and in hospitals that were unfit for ladies (Whyte, 2010). Nevertheless, in 1851, I went to Germany to the Deaconess Institute in Kaiserswerth, where I trained as a nurse for three months. I worked for a year as the head of the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentle Women on Harley Street in London. Subsequently, I received a request from Sidney Herbert to travel to Scutari Turkey with a group of nurses to care for wounded British soldiers in the Crimean War (1854-1856). I concluded that most of the soldiers had died because of the poor living...