Florence Nightingale's Contribution to Nursing

Running Head: FLORENCE NIGHTINGDALE’S CONTRIBUTION TO NURSING 1
Florence Nightingale's Contribution to Nursing
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FLORENCE NIGHTINGDALE’S CONTRIBUTION TO NURSING 2
Florence Nightingale's Contribution to Nursing
Introduction
Over the years, nursing theories have proved to be very significant in the nursing
practice. Many theories have been put forward by different theorist touching on different
aspects of the nursing profession especially regarding the interrelationship and the role
of the nurse in the care of patients. One such nursing theorist that has contributed
immensely on the conduct of the nursing profession is Florence Nightingale through her
Environmental Theory. This paper will decipher on the biography of Florence
Nightingale and her contribution to the modern nursing profession in both research and
in clinical practice. Being a group assignment, the papers will also outline a group and
personal reflection on the conduct of the assignment.
Florence Nightingale Biography
Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, and is highly regarded as the
principal founder of modern nursing practice. She was the first nursing theorist and is
by and largely celebrated as the “The Lady with the Lamp". Her nursing notes that were
culminated in the title: Notes on Nursing: What it is, What is not (1860) become the
foundation of modern nursing practice and nursing theories development. Amongst
some of her most famous and widely used theory in practice until today is the
Environmental Theory in which she outlines that for the restoration of a patient from a
detrimental healthcare condition, the patient requires to be placed in conditions that will
let the environment act upon him/her. Besides being heavily involved in the Crimean
war, she advocated that nursing required particular education and training. This is
depicted in her love for statistics where she used bar and pie charts to highlight critical
points in nursing. Following her numerous contributions in nursing, the International
Nurses Day celebrated on May 12 is observed in her honor. Florence Nightingale died
on August 13, 1910 (Bostridge, 2015).
Environmental Theory: Relationship with Modern Nursing Practice
In her Environmental Theory, Nightingdale asserts that the role of the nurse in
the recovery process of patients is to assist and utilize the patients' environment to
influence their recovery to healthy conditions. Nurses are supposed to configure their
patients' environmental conditions to make them desirable and appropriate for the
steady reinstatement of the patients' health. This proposition emanates from her
observation that external factors related to the patients' environments by and large
affect life, physiological and biological processes of patients' recovery process. In
molding the theory, Nightingdale assumed that natural laws are fundamental in the
treatment of patients.
Moreover, she asserts that indeed with determination mankind can achieve
perfection besides terming nursing as a calling, an art and a science different from
medicine that use environmental alteration to influence patients’ recovery. As such,
Nightingdale called for the special training and education for nurses and insisted that
trained nurses need to exploit the environmental canons to advance the best care to