Today, we celebrate the 195^th birthday of Florence Nightingale, the namesake for our foundation, Barco’s Nightingales.  We all know the stories of the “Lady with the Lamp,” who would walk through the medical wards late at night giving comfort to wounded soldiers. And, we all know that Florence is considered the “Mother of Modern Nursing.”  But did you know that her innovative practices changed the way medicine was practiced?
Frida and I love to tell her inspiring story.
Florence Nightingale was very lucky to have a father who believed in educating his daughters, something not typically done in the early 1800’s.  As a result, she received an excellent preparation in mathematics and was free to pursue activities outside the family home. Those pursuits included four months of medical training in Germany.

When asked by the War Office, Florence traveled to the Crimean War to care for the wounded soldiers. While there, she collected statistics and death records, and established strict sanitary procedures in the hospital wards. She then created statistical graphs that demonstrated the impact her sanitary procedures had in terms of a drastic decline in soldier deaths. Ms. Nightingale demonstrated to the medical community as a whole, how organized learning could lead to an improvement in medical and surgical practices. She later developed a “Model Hospital Statistical Form” to aide in the consistent collection of data and statistics.
The statistics proved that implementation of Florence’s stricter sanitary practices led to a compelling decline in the death rate of wounded soldiers.  Her sanitary practices became a requirement in both military and public hospitals throughout England.  In 1855, as a token of gratitude for all her work in improving conditions in military and public hospitals, the Nightingale Fund was established and supported by donations collected from the government and general public.

Ms. Nightingale used a substantial amount of these funds to create the first secular nursing school, the Nightingale Institute of Nursing, at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. The Institute formalized secular nursing education and made nursing a viable and respectable option for women who desired employment outside of the home. Her book, Notes On Nursing, became the cornerstone of the school’s curriculum. Both the school model and curriculum were used at nursing schools worldwide for many years.
Today, the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery is an academic school within Kings’ College London, and is one of the world’s oldest operating nursing schools. Ms. Nightingale’s statistical models and basic concepts about nursing still apply today. It’s for these reasons she is considered the “Mother of Modern Nursing.”

Happy birthday Florence Nightingale and thank you for setting the standard, which all of today’s nurses still follow.
~Michael and Frida Donner