Nursing as Defined by Florence Nightingale - Essay Example

Nursing As Defined By Florence Nightingale Nursing As Defined By Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is considered to be the pioneer of modern nursing. She became known as the Lady of the Lamp for her devout and selfless service to the sick and the wounded. Born in Florence, her excellence at mathematics in her childhood is representative of her acumen and brilliance. She was educated at home and when the time of her marriage drew nearer, she was expected to be a docile and good wife. However, she broke away from the expectations of the society from women. It was said that it was a calling from God Himself that she became more active in the promotion of health of the people and the improvement in their living conditions. She paid visits to the sick and the underprivileged living in villages and rural settings. She undertook training for a nurse in Germany and France against fierce criticism from her family, who considered the job to be demeaning for someone of her knowledge and status because nursing was considered to be the lowest form of hired help (Aller, 2007). Later in October 1854, she was appointed as a nurse to a military base in Crimea. The terrible sanitation conditions of the place shook her, and she set about with her group of volunteers to improve the sanitation conditions of the place, and to provide the utmost nursing care to the injured soldiers. It was for her work in the Crimea military base that she got named as the Lady of the Lamp since she used to make rounds of the wards carrying a lamp (Lamb, 2008). Her contribution to nursing is not just limited to tending to the sick. When she came back from the Crimean War, she drew up a fund to establish the first nursing institute to give nurses proper training. She also penned down her thoughts and opinions about what nursing is and how it should be conducted in the book Notes on Nursing. Today the book is read by nurses all over the world, and is also integrated into the core objectives of nursing training. Nursing is not merely about administering medicines into the sick but also requires the nurse to be more compassionate and to provide the utmost comfort to the patient. The following paragraphs portray how nursing has been defined by Nightingale. I consider every woman to be a nurse because she is involved in taking care of someone’s health at some point of her life. In my opinion, a nurse is someone who takes responsibility for somebody’s health. I adhered to the view that if every woman knew how to nurse, the product of their collaborated experience and efforts can be very magnanimous and precious. Nurses can not be taught to nurse; it is something that they would have to find themselves. She defined the main objective of nursing as helping the patient regain and retain his or her vital powers by providing for his or her needs. As a result, the patient would be provided in an environment that places him or her in the best possible state for nature to heal him or her. I do not consider this to be a passive process. In fact, it required the active participation of the nurse in making an environment that promotes health. Such an environment would mirror the patient’s capacity to regain health. I felt the need to write a book on nursing because preventative medicine in nursing was largely ignored. Nowadays, the needs of the patients are not given much importance and are overshadowed due to science. I realized that nurses need to be exposed to the essentials of nursing practice so that they can improve the quality of the care given to the patients. Throughout my life, I based her nursing conduct on the virtue theory. The virtue theory regards the nursing profession to be coupled with certain moral responsibilities since it follows that the profession exerts influence not only on the people seeking care but also on heath care workers. I put the ethical aspect of the theory into practice in my service to the poor and the sick. The virtue theory basically encompasses four components: nursing duty of care, environmental health, promotion of patient welfare beyond physical treatments and nurses as role models for the community. I constantly strove for the application of the virtue theory and helped define and shape ideal professional conduct in nursing through it (Davis, Tshudin, & Raeve, 2006). The virtue theory is based on the ideology that health care services by nurses should be given in response to internal, values-based motivation within each individual. According to the theory, nurses should strive to observe traditional, social values in their conduct. The theory analyzes nursing practices against a pre-conceived, "ideal" standard that I myself defined (“Florence Nightingale’s”, 2010). I have relied upon my experiences in the war when I was tending to the injured soldiers in penning down the essentials of nursing practice. In an era where science overrides nursing care, it is important for nurses to understand their role in making the process of health recovery prompter and less painful for the patients. Although most of the nurses who would be reading this book would not be serving injured soldiers, I believe that the suffering of all patients is the same and the core values of the nurse-patient relationship are universal. I assume that the guidelines that I offer are valuable to all nurses alike. I regard disease as a reparative process. I do not consider it to be deleterious to health. On the other hand, I believe it is a remedy or cure by the nature to set right the process of decay and debilitation that had been going on in the body for days, weeks or even months. Disease was the end of that process- an exodus of the internal products of the process to the outside. Disease did not occur in conjunction with suffering always. If nurses could understand this, they could take steps to treat the patient. Nursing is all about caring for the sick and showing empathy to them. Nurses should be able to understand the sufferings of the people, and try her best to comfort them. I observed both private dwellings and public settings and gained an insight in to the reasons due to which people suffer. I realized that people’s suffering was not absolutely from the disease. Primarily, patients suffered from a lack of fresh air, light, warmth, peace, hygiene, balanced diet and in the punctuality and quality of care being provided to them by the health care facility. If any of these factors come into play, the disease can not perform its role as a reparative process, and so suffering and pain enters the scene. In my book, I distinguished between the symptoms of the patient that are due to lack of proper nursing and from disease. For instance, if the patient complains of feeling cold or feverish, or is faint, sick after ingestion of food or if he or she has a bed-sore, then it is due to the nurse and not the disease. The role of a nurse is not confined to the administration of medicines or application of cataplasms to provide relief to pain. I expect nurses to perform better than that. Nurses should be able to understand the importance of fresh air, peace, warmth, hygiene, warmth, light and provision of a diet that suits the condition of the patient. The nursing profession required nurses to provide these factors at the minimum expense of the health of the patient. I lay great emphasis on the role environment plays in the rejuvenation of health of the individual. For me, health is an additive process and is the balance of physical, environmental and psychological elements, and not merely the absence of disease. Disease has the potential to set an internal problem right and so can also give a chance for spiritual growth. I devised the laws of health which give an insight into the standards of hygiene that nurses need to meet. I think that the main essence of nursing practice is to keep the people and the environment healthy (“Nursing Theory”, 2010). The environment is something that could be stage-managed and altered by the nurses to facilitate the patient to regain health. I believe that the real job of the nurse lies in facilitating the disease to function as a reparative process. The patient is at the heart of my model of nursing. The model entails the view that a nurse should be aware of the physical, intellectual and spiritual aspects of the patient. This is reflected from the value I have placed in recognizing and appreciating variety. In compliance with the caring provided by nurses, I view nursing as an art and a science. This view stems from my opinion that science and spirituality go hand in hand. This opinion is strongly embedded in my religious and philosophical values and hence is a part of my professional practice. I am an empiricist by nature and repeatedly emphasize on giving attention to small details with the desire to use this knowledge in making the world a better place to live in. The transformation of this knowledge into practicality requires skill and finesse which is no less than that possessed by painters and sculptors: “Nursing is an art; and if it is to be made an art, it requires as exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation, as any painter’s or sculptor’s work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or cold marble, compared with having to do with the living body—the Temple of God’s spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts; I had almost said, the finest of the Fine Arts” (Dossey, & Keegan, 2009) I regard ventilation and pure air as the first rule in nursing. It is the basic requirement of the patient, and is the element that nurses should place the most emphasis upon. The rule is to keep the air the patient breathes in as pure as the external air, given that it does not chill him and cause any sort of discomfort. It is a myth that people can catch cold in bed, and nurses should not stop from opening windows and letting fresh air come in. Nurses should not rely on the warmth produced by the breath and bodies of the sick, since this is present in an infected atmosphere. Trying to keep the ward or room warm by keeping the ventilation minimum would render quick recovery futile since the patients are being made to breathe their own hot, humid, putrescent atmosphere. As a nurse, I ensured that my patients breathed in fresh air and hope my conduct sets an example for other nurses to follow. Where providing conditions of better ventilation, drainage, light and warmth are essentials of nursing practice, I speak from experience when I say that all the results of good nursing are made ineffective if the management is petty. This means that nurses should have knowledge of managing their duties when they are not present. There are many other facets of nursing care that I focus upon in my book such as noise, fumigation, food and bedding. Throughout her life, I have struggled to make it easier for women to join the nursing profession. I shun the views of people that a feat performed by men made it acceptable, while those by women are not. I encourage all women, regardless of their profession, to know the laws of health. Nurses should undertake formal education to build their knowledge and gain experience. Most of all, nursing is a service to God for the relief and help of mankind. In my book Notes on Nursing, I ask nurses to ignore the jargons and prejudices that are rife in the society, and “go your way straight to Gods work, in simplicity and singleness of heart” (Nightingale, 2009). Reference List Aller, S. B. (2007). Florence Nightingale. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications. Davis, A. J., Tshudin, V., & Raeve, L. D. (2006). Essentials of teaching and learning in nursing ethics: perspectives and methods. Philadelphia: Elsevier Health Sciences. Dossey, B. M., & Keegan, L. (2009). Holistic nursing: a handbook for practice. 5th ed. Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Lamb, J. (2008). Florence Nightingale (1820-1910). Retrieved from http://historicalbiographies.suite101.com/article.cfm/florence_nightingale_18201910 Florence Nightingale’s Approach to Nursing (2010). Retrieved from http://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1703237.html Nightingale, F. (2009). Notes on Nursing: What it is, and What it is Not. BiblioBazaar, LLC. Nursing Theory and Theorist: Florence Nightingale. Retrieved from http://gino-memoirofaschizo.blogspot.com/2010/04/nursing-theory-theorist-florence.html Self-evaluation I have tried my best to cover the main aspects of how Nightingale defined nursing, while conforming to the guidelines for writing the assignment. The paper reviews the major ideologies of the profession as practiced by Nightingale, and provide an insight into her tireless efforts. Her devotion to the profession has consistently been emphasized upon and provides an opportunity to the readers to reflect upon the commitment they show to their responsibilities. However, there is always room for improvement and I feel that in my case, I can improve upon my paper by making it a bit more sentimental, showing the empathy that Nightingale felt for the sick. In order to sensitize nurses in the contemporary world and to relate her experiences to nursing today, there is a need for a moving and powerful portrayal of the conditions that she worked in and her selfless duty to the sick. I can also improve upon the expression of the paper. The sentence structure can be varied to break down any monotony that might develop and to add more effect to the content. Read More