Barco’s Nightingales Foundation is proudly named after the pioneer of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, whose greatest life achievements included pioneering of nursing and the reform of hospitals.  These were amazing feats considering that most Victorian women of her age group did not attend universities or pursue professional careers.

Born in 1820 to wealth and privilege, Florence Nightingale’s father educated her in languages and mathematics. At the age of 25 she told her parents she wanted to become a nurse. Her parents were totally opposed to the idea as nursing was associated with working class women. Eventually, her father relented and at the age of 31, she went to Germany where she studied to become a nurse. Two years later she was appointed superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in London, a position she held for one year, leaving to go to the aid of British soldiers dying from Cholera and Malaria in Turkey during the Crimean War.

Military officers and doctors objected to Florence Nightingale’s views on reforming military hospitals and their practices and she had to resort to the news media to report conditions to get the public and financial support for reforming sanitary practices. After a great deal of publicity, Florence Nightingale was given the task of organizing the barracks hospital after the battle of Inkerman and by improving the quality of the sanitation she was able to dramatically reduce the death-rate of her patients.

In 1860, Florence Nightingale used money raised by benefactors, to found the first official nurses’ training program, the Nightingale School for Nurses. The mission of the school was to train nurses to work in hospitals, to work with the poor and to teach. This intended that students cared for people in their homes, an appreciation that is still advancing in reputation and professional opportunity for nurses today.

While Florence Nightingale is most remembered as a pioneer of nursing and a reformer of hospital sanitation methods, unknown to many, was her use of new techniques of statistical analysis. During the Crimean War she plotted the incidence of preventable deaths in the military. She developed the “polar-area diagram” to dramatize the needless deaths caused by unsanitary conditions and the need for reform. With her analysis, Florence Nightingale revolutionized the idea that social phenomena could be objectively measured and subjected to mathematical analysis. She was an innovator in the collection, tabulation, interpretation, and graphical display of descriptive statistics. As Florence Nightingale demonstrated, statistics provided an organized way of learning and lead to improvements in medical and surgical practices. She also developed a Model Hospital Statistical Form for hospitals to collect and generate consistent data and statistics.

Florence Nightingale’s lasting contribution has been her role in founding the modern nursing profession. She set an example of compassion, commitment to patient care and diligent and thoughtful hospital administration that is the cornerstone for the nursing profession today.