Teh Nightingale Research Paper

Florence Nightingale, according to Alligood and Tomey (2010), is considered to be “the founder of modern nursing,” (pg.71). Nightingale came from a well-educated, Victorian family. She was educated by her father as well as some other tutors in subjects such as mathematics, languages, religion, and philosophy. This made her much more educated then other young women of her time. Eventually, Nightingale decided that she should become more useful in her life and felt a calling to nursing practice. Nightingale spent years in nursing practice including her work during the Crimean war caring for British soldiers. During her care of these soldiers, Nightingale felt that she needed to improve the environment in which these soldiers were residing
Nightingale believed every woman would be a nurse at some point because every woman will care for another’s health at some point. Assumptions involving person made by Nightingale included that a patient is a relatively passive role. However, Nightingale mentions that each patient should be involved in meal planning and should perform tasks of self-care when possible. This implies that Nightingale did consider each patient as an individual person to be cared for. According to Alligood and Tomey (2010), “Nightingale defined health as being well and using every power to the fullest extent in living life,” (pg.77). Also, Nightingale emphasized that the environment in which an individual is meant to heal in should “assist nature in healing the patient,” (pg.
Nurses are continually learning new ways to keep the environment clean and therefore stop the spread of infection, such as better hand hygiene techniques. Continuous research will always be done based on Nightingale’s theory to find better techniques and interventions to stop the spread of contagions and keep a clean environment. Nightingale’s theory is both clear and simple enough for any novice nurse or nursing student to understand. A clean environment will aide in healing and promote overall health and wellness. This has been proven in many ways with the use of gloves, sterile technique, and hand washing. This theory can easily be generalized to any area of practice as well to areas of private care. No matter what environment the patient is in, whether it is in a home or in a hospital, a clean environment is essential to healing. Nightingale’s theory as well as clarifications and descriptions of specific parts are accessible. All nursing students and nurses will have no problem locating Nightingale’s findings and then implementing them because her work has been so influential to nursing practice. Every hospital in the country has adopted methods of sterile technique and ways to keep the patient’s environment clean. This theory could be argued to be one of the most important theories in nursing history. Nightingale made gigantic steps