Florence Nightingale: Description of Nursing Concepts and Legacy

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Florence Nightingale: Description of Nursing Concepts and Legacy Florence Nightingale: Description of Nursing Concepts and Legacy It is not possible to receive any formal education in the practice of nursing without either learning about or being influenced by the concepts and theories established by Florence Nightingale. Nightingale was “a nurse, statistician, sanitarian, social reformer, and scholar”, and her concepts and theories greatly influenced nursing in its early development as an accredited medical profession (Burkhardt & Nathaniel, 2008, p. 18). Her theoretical concepts and conceptual model are still referenced in nursing practice throughout the world, and Nightingale’s legacy still thrives to this day.
The Legend Herself Florence Nightingale was born in the year 1820 in Florence, Italy. She grew up in a wealthy family in an era when young women were to grow up to be proper homemakers, respectable society members, and civilized, obedient wives to their husbands. During this time women in the “nursing profession”, or rather those who looked after the ill and destitute in hospitals, were considered low class and “little less than prostitutes” (Bloy, 2010). Nightingale’s interests in nursing began to manifest when she was 16 after she “experienced a ‘calling’ from God to serve humankind”, and although she had similar impressions in the following years and identified her desire to be a nurse at age 24, she was not able to break away from her family’s disapproval to train in nursing until age 31 (Fitzpatrick & Whall, 2005, p. 22). A couple of years after Nightingale completed a period of training to be a sick nursing in Germany, the Crimean War broke out and Nightingale, along with 38 other nurses, traveled to Scutari to offer their services in the military hospitals (Fitzpatrick & Whall, 2005). It was here where
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