Book Review: Florence Nightingale At First Hand
- 12/02/2019
Book Review: Florence Nightingale At First Hand
Book Title: Florence Nightingale At First Hand
Author: Lynn McDonald
Year of publication: 2010
Number of pages: 197pages
Florence Nightingale as we know is the founder of nursing, she was a reformer and a political reformer. She was not the first to reform nursing, but she was the first to make nursing a paid profession. She lived a fulfilled live, a life millions of people emulate. The book titled “Florence Nightingale At First Hand” by Lynn McDonald is a biography of Florence Nightingale.
“Nightingale’s interest in nursing emerged in early childhood. While still a girl she began to nurse sick relatives, servants and villagers. In 1845, by then in her mid-twenties, she sought to learn nursing at nearby Salisbury Hospital. Her mother and sister were vehemently opposed. Nursing was then an unskilled occupation, poorly paid and disreputable. The stereotype has nurses drinking too much and using coarse language, although Nightingale herself refuted the latter, though not the former. The years of lost opportunity continued to rankle in old age. As late as 1900 she recorded that she ‘never had a happy moment till I went into hospital life’, and then ‘never had an unhappy moment” Page 6
Nightingale remained unmarried, as means to fulfil her calling and call to service. The book states that there was no form of contraception then, and women were obliged to live for their families. At age 36, Nightingale was already a national heroine.
“In Nightingale’s day there were no educational prerequisites for admission to a training school. Those trained at her school, called ‘probationers’, were given free room and board and a small stipend. In fact, before Nightingale, working-class women did not nurse in Britain. Rather, they were hospital cleaners, although they were called ‘nurses’. Those on night work had some duties as patient ‘watchers’. Nightingale’s reform was to separate cleaning jobs from patient care, reserving the title ‘nurse’ to the latter, and making it a decent, well-paying job, open on the basis of merit, regardless of class origins.” Page 33
Nightingale’s nursing establishment began with the 38 nurses who had travelled with her to Scutari. She believed nurses should not be dumb, and are not doctor’s slave. She was a principled and strong woman.
“On nursing practice Nightingale would make much of the concept of ‘intelligent obedience’ to doctor’s orders – which most decidedly did not mean blind obedience.” Page 52
“The nurse’s role was no less important than the doctor’s: ‘The physician prescribes for supplying the vital force – but the nurse supplies it’.” Page 100
She had nothing against doctors, but she believes medicine or surgery does not cure, as she wrote in one of her books, “diet, not medicine ensures health”
Her challenges
She fell sick even as a nurse.
Nurses are life savers, but they also need to protect themselves, which is why there is need for PPE in this generation. Soldiers who died during the Crimean war did not die due to wound, or blood loss, a lot of them died because they were diseased. Later, Nightingale was infected by Crimean fever, likewise some of her nurses.
Nightingale, had a great legacy. She reformed nursing not only in England, but in Vienna, India, USA, Egypt. She was neither a racist, or religious fanatic. She believed in equity, and justice. She lived her life honorably, and nursing is grateful for her reformation.
Book is available in PDF format.
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