Mother Of The Science of Nursing

Florence Nightingale is credited with inventing and establishing NURSING as a science and as a profession. At a time when aristocracy ruled and women from aristocracy were forbidden to go into wars and aid the wounded, Florence, who was from an aristocratic family, went to the Crimean war to help and nurse soldiers.

During the Crimean War, the casualty of soldiers from epidemics and lack of proper medical treatment was greater than that on the battlefield. Florence Nightingale volunteered to join hospitals to nurse the wounded. Her nursing methods were so methodical and scientific that the death rate in the hospitals dropped from a staggering 42% to a mere two percent.

Florence did the groundwork and laid the foundation of the science of nursing. Her method of charts for patients was useful to physicians and is used in hospitals even today. She was the first to distinguish between nursing in general wards, in wards for gynaecology, psychiatry, and nursing at home. She engineered the use of separate wards for males, females and children!

The British government went out of the way to honour her and conferred the OBC on her. She was the first woman to receive that award. Another first!