PROVO — Florence Nightingale may have died 100 years ago, but her ideas about sanitation, organization and education are still key components of hospitals today.
"We teach our nurses what we call healing connections," said Lisa Paletta, nurse administrator at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. "We teach them to take the time at the beginning of each shift to connect with the patients on a personal level. That all started clear back with Florence's philosophy of nursing."
This year is the centennial of Nightingale's death and a chance for nurses around the world to celebrate her achievements, not just as the pioneer of nursing, but as an advocate for hospital reform, statistical analysis and nursing education.
"Florence defined professional nursing and had a vision of all that nursing needed to become in order to provide the leadership needed in health promotion, illness prevention and the process of healing," said University of Utah College of Nursing Dean Maureen Keefe.
As part of the centennial celebration, BYU's Harold B. Lee Library created an exhibit about Nightingale on the main floor, complete with original letters and first-edition books written by Nightingale.
Born in 1820, Nightingale was taught by her father about languages, math and world history. By age 7, she was an avid letter writer, BYU's College of Nursing Dean Beth Cole said during a recent talk about Nightingale's life.
Nightingale also was deeply religious, noting several "calls from God" to serve him through nursing.
To that end, Nightingale refused two marriage proposals and almost alienated her family, who couldn't accept her desire to be a nurse rather than a wife.
But supportive friends and extended family members, many of whom held positions of political power, continued to encourage and aid Nightingale in her nursing pursuits, Cole said.
The work for which she is best known began in 1854 in Turkey, where the Crimean War was raging and the Scutari hospital was teeming with wounded men.
Nightingale kept notes on the deplorable conditions, which included filthy blankets, blocked sewer lines, vermin running rampant, no working laundry facilities, 13 pots for cooking both meat and tea, and four miles of beds.
"She was appalled by the filthy blood- and waste-soaked conditions and ordered that the men and their linens should be washed and kept clean," Cole said.
Nightingale taught the nurses how to wash and dress wounds with separate sponges for each soldier. She bought massive amounts of sheets and shirts, mop buckets and mops, and began insisting that the hospital be kept clean and orderly.
She also was the first person to institute a rational system for receiving and housing patients. Through all of this, she kept statistical data about the deaths of the men, a type of analytical tool Paletta said nurses still use today.
Nightingale continued to write letters to her influential friends, begging for help to institute reform. But it was her personal ministry to wounded soldiers in the evenings that earned her the endearing and enduring title, "Lady With the Lamp."
Only after the last soldier left the hospital in July 1856 did Nightingale return home, although she "saw her achievements only as the starting point for her future work," Cole said.
Permanently weakened by the Crimean fever she had contracted earlier, Nightingale stayed at home and devoted her life to writing books and reports for the government regarding her observations, including the influential "Notes on Nursing."
Thanks to generous donations in her honor, she also established the Nightingale Training School for Nurses at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, where any moral, upstanding woman could become a nurse.
"Nursing went from menial work to a (way) for women of good reputation to contribute to society," Cole said. "A century after her death, we're still inspired by her life story."
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