#Crimean war florence nightingale how to
#Crimean war florence nightingale professional

Medical care does not exist in a vacuum from the world around it.Ĭontagious illnesses like Covid-19 bring into stark relief the fact that health is a both a communal good and community effort. The list goes on! But even at our creative best, the medical disparities will remain entrenched unless society is re-envisioned as well. health care system needs to be more flexible and nimble in nearly every aspect - medical care, public health, research, supplies, prevention, communication, vaccination.

#Crimean war florence nightingale how to

There has been much talk about how to re-envision the health care system once we’ve achieved the much-coveted settling of the dust. The reasons for the disparity are in plain sight: unequal distribution of economic and housing stability, jobs without sick leave or options for telecommuting, crowded homes that render social distancing elusive, long commutes to jobs and grocery stores that preclude “sheltering in place,” and heavier burdens of chronic disease that contribute to more severe outcomes with Covid.

The staggeringly uneven toll of infection and death we have witnessed is a bitter confirmation of the interrelationship between health care and society. (The nursing higher-ups at the time were similarly irritated by her ruffling of the status quo.)īreaths, deaths, and missed breaks: How counting defined my days as a pandemic nurse Florence Nightingale London Stereoscopic Company/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesĪs Covid-19 begins to recede in the U.S., Nightingale’s observations could hardly be more prescient. Nightingale’s approach to nursing education was equally meticulous, professionalizing a field whose standards until then had ranged from uneven to abysmal. Her rigorous reforms of the wretched medical conditions - reforms which rankled the military higher-ups - slashed the hospital mortality rate from 33% to 2% over the course of a single year. When she arrived at the British military hospital in the Scutari region of the Ottoman empire in November 1854, a year after the war had begun, she was horrified to learn that far more soldiers were dying of infection and poor medical care than were dying on the battlefield. Nightingale is best known for her work illustrating the first two tenets. Medical care does not exist in a vacuum from the world around it.Nurses require stringent and scientific training.Medical care has the potential to do harm.

#Crimean war florence nightingale professional

Nightingale’s experience as a nurse during the Crimean War in the mid-1850s led her to three insights that came to define her professional life, insights as revolutionary as they were unpopular: That her bicentennial fell during a worldwide pandemic is both illuminating and ironic. Last May marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale.