User:Shabidoo/Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale is part mythological figure and part dedicated nurse and early advocate of evidence based medicine. Well educated and a upper class background, she dedicated her life to social change, prolific writing, advocating important changes in laws and policy (often based on sound statistical methods) and an early writer of popular science (writing about topics in a way most people could understand). She revolutionized many elements of modern nursing. Most famously she mostly invented modern nursing as we know it doing all of the above while being one of the "disadvantaged" gender. This explains why she is somewhat of a hero figure for humanist principles, especially when she did so in a time where the use of evidence based knowledge and progressive social change (it was the Victorian era after all) was not the default and where her social position was not completely handed to her. Florence sporadically wrote non-progressive generalizations about women and races. She also dedicated much of her work to God. It should be noted however that in her time she was light-years ahead of most others on feminism and other progressive issues and was an extremely moderate Christian. Her use of evidence based medicine and statistical analysis deeply influenced the future of medicine and nursing.

Youth
To illustrate her privileged beginning, she was born in a Tuscan villa near her name sake, the city of Florence. Educated by her father and several quasi-governesses, she was exposed to a great variety of social figures and cultures while traveling around Europe. From an early age she befriended strong women characters who saw through class/position, gender roles and social norms. This influence may have helped hear deal with her families harsh opposition to Florence taking up nursing. Having her family accept her future career was nothing compared to the barriers she faced entering medical practice. She was a dedicated student (often having to self-teach and find academic material as best she could).

Florence's training and initial work expereince was interspersed with a kind of exotic adventure traveling uncommon for women at that time writing many pages throughout her experiences.

Religion
While a pioneer in humanist principles, much of her motivation was rooted in doing things in the name of God. Having said that, Florence tended to cherry pick those rare passages in the bible that focused on caring for others and managed to believe in the Christian God while still stoutly rejecting dogma. For example she held that non-Christians and sinners eventually made it into heaven. She was also critical of religious sectarianism and discrimination against non-Christians. Florence didn't hesitate to criticize the harm that the Church of England inflicted on Victorian society. She was also open to wisdom that could be gained from other religions. In short, she didn't use her religion to justify judgement, cruelty, oppression and discrimination to others, meaning she was quite unlike most religious people back then and now in most parts of the world. In short, she was one of the most agreeable and respectable devout Christian around.

Sanitary conditions
While Florence didn't take credit for the enormous amount of lives who were saved due to the implementation of her policies she was directly responsible for a fundamental change in military medical treatment and to some extent, hospital care in general. In the British camp during the Crimean war she reduced a death rate of 45% for interned soldiers down to 2%. Her ceaseless persistance, writing to the British government and newspapers, she successfully introduced good ventilation, well functioning drains and sewers, hand washing and nourishing food. She personally trained a large amount of nurses to follow these principles and she later introduced them in several civilian hospitals back in the United Kingdom. She continued to petition the government throughout her career for better hospital conditions and published many papers and articles in newspapers singularly championing.

Education
Nightingale also introduced specialised nurse training writing a book which was popular both amongst training nurses and the ordinary public. It is still viewed as a remarkable work in a pioneering field. She started the Florence Nightingale school of nursing which is now part of Kings College.