You At Your Best

By KaReN RICe NWa DeMoCRaT-GazeTTe National Nurses Week, May 6 through May 12, is a week dedicated to showing appreciation to nurses for their hard work and dedication. May 12, the final day of National Nurses Week, is the birthday of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910.) Born in Florence, Italy and raised in England, Nightingale is considered the founder of modern nursing, largely due to her pioneering work during the Crimean War (1853-1856). During the War, Nightingale was asked to organize a team of nurses to help improve unsanitary and inhumane conditions at a British hospital for injured soldiers in Constantinople. She and her team went to work, cleaning the hospital from top to bottom, establishing a laundry to provide clean linens and generally improving sanitation and alleviating suffering for the soldiers. She even enlisted some of the less infirm patients to help. Nightingale's work resulted in the hospital's death rate being reduced by two-thirds. Due to her habit of making regular rounds at night and talking to the patients, Nightingale became known as "The Lady with the Lamp." Up until that time, the idea of making rounds was not common practice. Many of Florence Nightingale's ideas and practices were, in fact, revolutionary at the time and grew to define modern nursing. Nightingale returned after the war a hero, receiving a reward from the British government. She used the money to establish a hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. Nightingale had raised the image of nursing from that of a lowly profession to an honorable one. Although she was bedridden by the age of 38 after contracting "Crimean fever" during the war, she remained an advocate and authority on health care reform. She wrote books and served as an consultant on sanitation, nursing and field hospital practices all over the world, including during the U.S. Civil War. National Nurses Week was first observed in October 1954, the 100th anniversary of Nightingale's mission to Crimea. In 1982, President Ronal Reagan signed a proclamation designating May 6 a "National Recognition Day for Nurses." The history of nursing and National Nurses Week The Florence Nightingale Pledge This modified "Hippocratic Oath" was composed in 1893 by Mrs. Lystra E. Gretter and a Committee for the Farrand Training School for Nurses in Detroit, MI. It was called the Florence Nightingale Pledge as a token of esteem for the founder of modern nursing. "I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully. I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling. With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician in his work, and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care." Florence Nightingale ministering to soldiers at Scutari, a suburb of Istanbul, during the Crimean War. Lithograph by Robert Riggs ca. 1930 with modern watercolor. Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), photograph ca. 1880 6 | YOU AT YOUR BEST | nwAdg.cOm/YOUATYOURBEST mAY - BEST nURSES | SATURdAY, ApRil 27, 2019

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