Florence Nightingale

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  • Created by: naomi
  • Created on: 03-04-13 17:02

Florence Nightingale

Advantages

  • Mortality rates did fall at Scutari, down to 20% by March 1955.
  • She was very considerate and caring to the families of injured soldiers, by writing letters to them
  • She establishes a Nightingale training school for nurses; the Nightingale School for nurses was opened at St Thomas' Hospital in London in 1860.
  • Her work led to establishing money for future nurses
  • she was extremely persistent with trying to get the best for the soldiers e.g. getting new equipment
  • She laid the foundation of professional nursing
  • Florence and her nurses changed the awful conditions; they set up a kitchen, fed the wounded from their own supplies, dug latrines for sanitation, and asked for help from the wives of the wounded.

Disadvantages

  • When fresh water was installed the mortality rates dropped from 42.7% to 2.2%
  • the nurses didn't know how to treat many of the men; they didn't understand WHY the men were dying
  • she opposed Sidney Herbert's idea to bring more nurses out
  • Hugh small said 'before the sanitary commissions arrived, she had been running a death camp'
  • During Nightingale's first winter 10 x more soldiers died from cholera and typhoid than from actual battles
  • She was a very hard lady to work with and many complained to their families.

Evaluation

In 1984 Florence Nightingale was asked to go to Turkey to manage the nursing of British soldiers wounded in the Crimean War (1854 - 56) as stations were poorly staffed, with insufficient supplies, and the medical and sanitary conditions were awful. This terrible state of affairs was reported by the media in Britain. She travelled to Scutari (the location where the wounded and ill soldiers of the Crimean War were taken) to help the wounded soldiers. She found the hospital conditions to be in a very poor state. Many of the wounded were unwashed and were sleeping in overcrowded, dirty rooms without blankets or decent food. In these conditions diseases such as typhus, cholera and dysentery spread quickly. As a result, death rate amongst wounded soldiers were very high. Only 1 in 6 soldiers died from their war wounds. Florence Nightingale had some impact on medical developments. She improved training for nurses and her 'notes on nursing' emphasised the role of hygiene and influenced the setting of the royal commissions of health. People in Britain also gave money to a fun to help the 'Nightingale Nurses'. 

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