Florence of Nightingale

Florence Nightingale (Environmental Theory)

Florence Nightingale, the matriarch of the modern nursing, was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820. As she grow up, her father provided her with a reputable education, which was uncommon for a Victorian woman (women in those times were often not educated as well as men.

According to her biographer, Sir Thomas Cook, Nightingale was a linguist; had a vast knowledge of science, mathematics, literature, and the arts; was well read in philosophy, history, politics and economics; and was well-informed about the working of government and political science. She wanted to do more with her life than become an inactive wife of an aristocrat. Florence had a firm faith in God (She was a Unitarian Christian), and for a time believed she had a religious calling.

First Nurse Educator

While Nightingale was struggling with decisions about her life, the seeds of modern nursing were being planted in Germany.

Germany was the place of the first nursing school. In 1936, Pastor Theodore Fleidner, a protestant pastor in Kaiserswerth, Germany, opened a hospital in a “vacant textile factory with one patient, one nurse, and a cook’ (hegge, 1990). When Fleider recognized there was no staff for the hospital, he decided to design a school of nursing.

Nightingale went to Kaiserswerth and stayed for 14 days in 1850 after trip to Egypt. She applied for admission to the school with a 12-page, handwritten “curriculum” showing her interest of becoming a nurse and entered the nursing program July 6, 1851, as the 134th nursing student to attend the Fleidner School of Nursing. She left Kaiserswerth on October 7, 1851, and was considered to be educated as a nurse. During the three months of studying with the sisters of Kaiserswerth, she developed skills in both nursing care and management which she took back to England.

When Nightingale went back to England, she used the knowledge from Kaiserswerth to prove her cause as a reformer for the...