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International Nurses Day: Here's Why Florence Nightingale Is Considered As Founder Of Modern Nursing

Florence Nightingale is known for providing vital support to British and allied soldiers during the Crimean War in Turkey. She emphasised the need for proper sanitary conditions to create a safer environment for patients and aid in their faster recovery.

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International Nurses Day is observed on May 12 every year to honour and celebrate the contributions of nurses around the world. The day coincides with the birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale, the British nurse and social reformer who worked selflessly and dedicated her entire life to improve the condition of the health sector.

Why Is Florence Nightingale Still Remembered?

On November 4, 1854, Florence Nightingale arrived in Turkey with a group of 38 nurses from England. Britain was at war with Russia in a conflict called the Crimean War, which lasted from 1854-1856, intending to limit Russian expansion into Europe. Nightingale and her nurses arrived at the army base hospital in Scutari and found soldiers injured and dying amid horrifying sanitary conditions. Soldiers were dying ten times more from diseases like typhus, cholera, typhoid and dysentery than from battle wounds.

The soldiers were poorly cared for, medicines and other essential items were in short supply, infections were rampant and hygiene was neglected. Nightingale noticed there was no clean linen, the soldiers' clothes were swarming with lice, bugs and fleas, the floors, ceilings and walls were filthy, and rats were hiding under their beds. There were no towels, soaps or basins, and only 14 baths for around 2000 soldiers. The death toll was the highest of all hospitals in the area.

According to a journal published in National Library of Medicine, one of Nightingale's first purchases was 200 Turkish towels. Later, she provided an enormous supply of clean shirts, soap, and necessities such as plates, knives, cups, forks and glasses.

She believed the main issues were diet, dirt and drains. She purchased food from England, cleaned up the kitchens, and made her nurses clean up the hospital wards. The British government sent a Sanitary Commission to improve ventilation and flush out the sewers.

Nightingale's accomplishments during these disastrous years were primarily the result of her concern with sanitation and its relation to mortality rate, as well as her ability to lead, organise, and get things done. She worked tirelessly to care for the soldiers themselves, making her rounds during the night after the medical officers had retired.

She thus earned the name of "the Lady with the Lamp," and the London Times referred to her as a "ministering angel." Her work brought the field of public health to national attention. Nightingale was one of the first in Europe to grasp the principles of the new science of statistics and to apply them to the military and civilian hospitals later. In 1907, she was the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit.

Her image has often been sentimentalised as the epitome of femininity, but she is especially remarkable for her intelligence, determination, and an amazing capacity for work.

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Writer : Tashafi Nazir
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Editor : Snehadri Sarkar
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Creatives : Tashafi Nazir

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