The Leadership and Legacy of Florence Nightingale

The Leadership and Legacy of Florence Nightingale

The influences of Florence Nightingale on the evolution of nursing theory include being an innovator of nursing and a crusader of hospital sanitation practices. Florence Nightingale two greatest life accomplishments was the initiating of nursing and the betterment regarding hospitals. Those two influences were so powerful considering that most Victorian woman of her age group that did not attend universities or pursue the professional profession. She is the essential foundation for her brilliance in nursing. Nightingale began doing charity work in hospitals in which this activated her voyage into becoming one of the most renowned, respected, and dedicated nurses of all times.

The state of nursing theory prior to Nightingale was none existent. Florence Nightingale fought a man driven institution to obtain control over men of war who was dying of minor to severe injuries. Later termed as advocacy. Her organizational experiences sanctioned this woman to discuss the male domains together with military plus medications. She effectively solved the concerns of resource purveyance, resolved personal disagreements concerning the nursing divisions, and proposed care modalities in the appearance of enormous overpopulation, unskillfulness, callous physicians, and a military configuration that was nonoperational plus unskilled (Saunders & Crane, 2012).

The transformations in nursing practice she established during her career were thrown observation of soldiers dying associated with unsanitary ailments. According to Fee and Garofalo (2010), Once Nightingale and her nurses reached the military hospital in Scutari she discovered soldiers injured and expiring because of the disturbing unsanitary conditions. Many of the soldiers were dying of diseases for example, dysentery, typhoid, cholera and typhus. (p. 1) Because of her advocating to get sanitary garments and proper food supplies for the wounded soldiers each patient survival rate increased tremendously.

There were several theorists after Nightingale expanded upon her ideas. The one person, in particular, was Jean Watson's Developmental Theory. According to Tourville and Ingalls (2003), "Watson's Theory of Human Caring is a widely accepted and practiced nursing theory.  The Center for Human Caring, the University of Colorado, is one institution where this theory is taught, practiced, and researched. It is the holistic, caring-healing emphasis of this model that brings nursing back to the essence of Florence Nightingale" (p. 5). Before Watson, Virginia Henderson and Hildegard Peplau were the leading theorists of the interactive model who have arranged the groundwork for forthcoming nurse theorists. The interactive model accentuates the significance of interpersonal relationships amongst the nurse and the patient. The situation focuses on acknowledging any interpersonal obstacles and providing intervention methods to "promote optimal socialization" (Tourville, C., & Ingalls, K. (2003). According to Tourville and Ingalls (2003) states, "Virginia Henderson known as the mother of modern nursing, taught a theory of nursing that belongs to the interactive model." (p. 23) Then Dorothy Johnson, Callista Roy and Betty Neuman were the three leading theorists of the systems model. All of the theorist  distinctiveness and differences in there theories, yet they each saw the role of the nurse as helping the patient respond or adapt in a healthy way to his/her continually changing environment.  In 1970’s Callista Roy's Adaptation Model was presented with additional systems model that was favorably influenced by Dorothy Johnson. It emphases on the persistent communication amongst the individual and the environment, and how the patient adapts to the environment.