Nightingale School of Nursing
The Nightingale School of Nursing was the first nursing school without church affiliation, which the pioneer of modern nursing , Florence Nightingale , set up with funds from the Nightingale Fund . Under this name, the nursing school existed from June 24, 1860 to 1991. In 1991, vocational nursing training in Great Britain was replaced by studies at technical colleges and universities. In 2017 the institute was renamed the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care .
In Great Britain, where until well into the second half of the 19th century the majority of nurses were women who had not found employment as servants, this nursing school was the first of its kind to offer women an independent career as a destination. The nursing researcher Monica Baly sees the significant contribution of the Nightingale School of Nursing in their model for other hospitals. The public attention that this training establishment received forced other UK hospitals to also establish training courses and improve the training of their nursing staff.
History of the Nightingale School of Nursing
background
The Nightingale Fund was initiated in 1855 out of gratitude for the work of Florence Nightingale and the group of nurses she led in the Crimean War. It is considered to be the first British appeal for donations to reach all levels of the British population. He was supported by a number of well-known personalities from Great Britain, including the soprano Jenny Lind gave a benefit concert. General William John Codrington suggested that the army donate a daily salary and nearly a quarter of the £ 44,039 raised came from British Army personnel. In view of the prevailing economic crisis, which hit the lower classes particularly hard, most of the donations came from members of the middle and upper classes.
Florence Nightingale, who at that time was still running the military hospital in Scutari ( Selimiye barracks ), reacted politely but not very enthusiastically to the idea of the Nightingale Fund. When asked to write down a first draft for the implementation of such a school, she replied in a letter dated September 27, 1855: There seem to be people who think that I have nothing else to do at the moment but make plans. She told her long-time friend Selina Bracebridge that she might want to gain years of experience before taking on such a job.
The Nightingale system
Florence Nightingale returned to Great Britain in 1856, but soon fell ill with a particularly serious form of brucellosis . This, along with their focus on reforming the British medical system, was one reason why the Nightingale Fund was not used until 1859. In addition, by the late 1850s, Florence Nightingale was not sure which form of nursing training would be most appropriate. In public there were more voices criticizing this, so that on June 24, 1860 the Nightingale School of Nursing was finally opened with 15 student nurses between the ages of 25 and 35 years. At the nursing school, the training model known today as the Nightingale system was largely implemented, in which young professionals were trained by experienced nurses and not by doctors. Florence Nightingale did not consider an extensive theoretical training with subsequent exams to be very effective, since from her point of view exams were only a test of memory and did not say anything about the performance of a nurse on the ward. Their training model placed an emphasis on hygiene; it also plays a role that Florence Nightingale was a supporter of the miasm theory until the beginning of the 1870s . In her opinion, cleanliness, proper ventilation and adequate nutrition cured most diseases. The training should not be confessional, but the nursing supervisor should place value on the character education and moral consolidation of the future nurses.
St Thomas' Hospital as a location
After a long search, London's St Thomas' Hospital was chosen as the training hospital , for which there were plans to move from the city center to a new building in a suburb. Since the original site of St Thomas' Hospital was needed for the construction of a railway line, but no decision had yet been made about the new location, the hospital was relocated to the Newington district for a transitional period two years after the nursing school opened . Compared to the old location, only a smaller number of patients could be admitted there; the number of schoolgirls went down to ten. The new St Thomas' Hospital finally opened on June 21, 1871. Against the resistance of Florence Nightingale, a location on the banks of the Thames opposite the Palace of Westminster was chosen. The hospital was partly on alluvial land, which, according to Florence Nightingale, as a supporter of the miasm theory, was unsuitable for a hospital. The design of the hospital, however, corresponded to the basic principles of an ideal hospital structure, as described by Florence Nightingale in her Notes on Hospitals . The building, designed by the architect Henry Currey , consisted of seven widely spaced wings in the Italianate style , which were connected by a central corridor on their side facing away from the river. The individual wings were so far apart that they did not shadow each other. The hospital existed in this form until the 1940s. A bomb hit in World War II destroyed four of the wings. Today it is replaced by a new building from the 1970s.
Some of the graduates of the Nightingale School of Nursing quickly became well known: when in January 1864 the philanthropist William Rathbone approached Florence Nightingale with an offer to fund a measure that would help improve nursing at the Brownlow Hill Workhouse Infirmary, Liverpool Florence Nightingale suggested that he pay a group of trained nurses headed by Agnes Jones . In the Brownlow Hill Workhouse Infirmary, only sick workhouse inmates were treated who were cared for by other inmates who were fit for work and had no training in nursing (so-called “pauper nurses”). Nightingale's start of work in Liverpool coincided with a scandal that drew public attention to conditions in the poorhouses: the death of 28-year-old Timothy Daly, an inmate of the Holborn Workhouse in London, was attributed solely to the filth of being in left him lying during his illness. In letters to Agnes Jones, Florence Nightingale warned that, because of this attention, her success could be the starting point for one of the most far-reaching reforms of her age.
Agnes Jones died of typhus in 1868 . However, there was now a consensus among the British public about the need for health care reforms for those in need of public support. British poor legislation specifically linked public welfare with such unattractive conditions as mandatory placement in a workhouse in order to limit abuse. However, the moment a caring poor fell ill, Florence Nightingale argued, “He is no longer a poor ... [but] he becomes the brother of all of us & like a brother we should care for him. “The new Metropolitan Poor Law designed to improve this was passed in 1867, paying tribute to Florence Nightingale's contribution. It did not go as far as Florence Nightingale originally suggested, but provided for the establishment of special hospitals for the feverish and the mentally ill, who had previously also been admitted to workhouses. The newly created Metropolitan Asylums Board , which was funded by the city, was responsible for these hospitals . It also envisaged the increasing use of trained nurses. The act is seen as the first step in separating public health care from public poor welfare and eventually culminated in the creation of the National Health Service , the UK's tax-funded health system that provides free medical care for everyone in the UK.
Problems and reform of training
After St Thomas' Hospital moved to the banks of the Thames, Florence Nightingale and the Nightingale Fund board of directors began to realize that nursing education was far from what Florence Nightingale wanted. Sarah Wardroper, who was also the nursing director of the St Thomas Hospital and director of the nursing school, was overwhelmed by this in every respect. The doctor Richard Whitfield, who had been paid for regular lectures by the Funds since 1860, barely fulfilled this obligation. Of the 180 women whose education was funded by the Nightingale Fund between 1860 and 1870, 66 left their education early. More than half of them were fired for misconduct, five of them for being drunk. Four more died during training; a large number of the schoolgirls showed that their health was not in a position to fulfill their contract. Syphilis and drug addicts were also among the sick ; an indication that Sarah Wardroper did not choose the students with the care Florence Nightingale wanted. Termination of the contract with St Thomas Hospital and the choice of another training hospital were considered, but Florence Nightingale and the Board of Directors were aware that this situation could repeat itself at another hospital. After lengthy negotiations with the hospital management, the surgeon John Croft was commissioned to take the place of Richard Whitfield to give a weekly lecture at the school. John Croft fulfilled this task until 1894; the series of lectures he developed contributed significantly to the long-term success of the Nightingale Nursing School. The schoolgirls began to take part in autopsies, and a standard of care for patients undergoing surgery was developed, giving trained nurses more responsibility. It is presumably also due to John Croft that Florence Nightingale recognized the miasma theory as wrong and accepted the theory of infection . In her publications in the late 1870s, she increasingly emphasized the value of antiseptic measures . Remaining at St Thomas Hospital prevented a separation from Sarah Wardroper.
The different levels of education of the student nurses caused problems. Especially within the group of the ordinaries , who came from the lower class, many were not sufficiently literate and unable to take notes in the lectures. These students received additional reading and writing lessons for two afternoons a week. The pupils living in a nurses' home were also looked after by a home sister who also took on part of the training. Florence Nightingale began to take care of the students more intensely, at times inviting one or two meetings each day in her house. In order to promote the esprit de corps of the group, she had music and literature evenings organized in the nursing home. The improvements in the standard of training soon showed success. By the early 1880s, nurses who had graduated from the Nightingale School of Nursing became nurses at a number of major hospitals in London and the province, where they established nursing training programs similar to that of the Nightingale School of Nursing.
Further development
After merging with the Olive Haydon School of Midwifery and the Thomas Guy & Lewisham School of Nursing, the school was renamed the Nightingale College of Health in 1991. Two years later, the institute was attached to King's College London and has been an independent faculty since 2014 with the departments of adult care, child and family health, obstetrics and psychiatric care. With the incorporation of the Cicely Saunders Institute , Palliative Care was added as a department, so that the faculty was renamed the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care .
Well-known graduates
- Sophie Mannerheim
- Cicely Saunders , who later became the founder of the hospice movement , was trained as a nurse from 1940 at the Nightingale School of Nursing.
supporting documents
literature
- Mark Bostridge: Florence Nightingale . Penguin Books, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-140-26392-3
- Monica E. Baly: Florence Nightingale and the Nursing Legacy . Whurr Publishers, London 1997, ISBN 1-86156-049-4
- Barbara Montgomer Dossey: Florence Nightingale - Mystic, Visionary, Healer , Springhouse Corporation, Springhouse 2000, ISBN 0-87434-984-2
- Helen Rappaport: No Place for Ladies - The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War . Aurum Press Ltd, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-84513-314-6
Single receipts
- ^ Bostridge, p. 545
- ↑ a b History of the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care (English) ; accessed on August 7, 2019
- ↑ Baly, p. 214 to p. 216 and p. 221
- ↑ Baly, p. 8
- ↑ Baly, p. 17
- ↑ Baly, p. 16
- ^ Bostridge, p. 294 and p. 295
- ↑ quoted from Baly, p. 9
- ↑ Baly, p. 12
- ^ Bostridge, p. 368
- ↑ Baly, p. 25
- ^ Bostridge, p. 365
- ↑ Baly, p. 31
- ↑ Baly, p. 37
- ^ Bostridge, p. 368 and p. 369
- ^ Bostridge, p. 443
- ^ Bostridge, p. 418
- ^ Bostridge, p. 417
- ^ Bostridge, p. 422
- ↑ The original quote is: [from the moment a pauper becomes sick], he ceases to be a pauper & becomes brother to the best of us & as a brother he should be cared for. Letter from Nightingale to Villiers dated December 30, 1864, quoted in Bostridge, p. 417
- ^ Bostridge, p. 426 and p. 427
- ^ Bostridge, pp. 447 and 448
- ^ Bostridge, p. 447
- ↑ Baly, p. 214
- ^ Bostridge, p. 447
- ^ Bostridge, p. 454
- ^ Bostridge, p. 453
- ^ Bostridge, p. 455
- ^ Bostridge, pp. 453 and 454
- ^ Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care: Departments & Institutes ; English, accessed August 8, 2019