Florence Nightingale’s Amazing Career

Posted on 30. Jan, 2010 by charles in Careers, Life Stories, Women

I have written a book called Amazing Careers and Florence Nightingale is one of the people featured.

Florence Nightingale was known as the lady of the lamp. The reason is that late at night in an army field hospital during the Crimea War she would go round to try and help the injured soldiers. Today, we may take nurses for granted until we are ill or need of help. Yet, when Florence started her work nursing was seen as a low status job.

Thanks to the work of Florence Nightingale thousands of people have become nurses and saved countless lives. On her return to the UK, Florence set up a training scheme for nurses. You can see a museum dedicated to her work at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. She not only trained nurses but kept statistical records to show the effect of treatment. Those studies guided the development of nursing as a practical science.

Therefore, when you go into hospital you can expect to gain a very high standard of care not just from the doctors but nurses who are a vital part of both prevention and cure in our health systems. Today, a lot of the work of nurses is taken up doing diagnostic work.

Florence Nightingale set the lamp burning for those, both women and men, who wanted to make a career caring for others. In the USA, there are about 3 million registered nurses of which about 13% have gained Masters or Doctoral degrees to go with their foundation nursing qualifications. Indeed, for every doctor there about 4 nurses, whose average age is 45.

This is good news and may have surprised Florence Nightingale. When she started her nursing work she was opposed not only by her parents who objected but by most doctors. Florence was an amazing person and so are the nurses who will help you when you are need. Treat them well.

Thanks to lizsmith for their flickr photo

Tags: Doctors, health, health care, hospitals, lady with the lamp, Nightingale, Nurses, nursing, Patients, War