Florence Nightingale was known as “THE LADY WITH THE LAMP.” She offered nursing education paradigms and priorities. She was one of the first proponents of evidence-based treatment. She acknowledged the nurses’ ability to observe, evaluate, and modify health care systems as a privilege. She returned to Britain in 1856 after gaining knowledge via experience. In the years that followed, she stressed hygienic health, enhancing her image as an exceptional leader. The last fifty years of her life were devoted to establishing nursing as a respected profession. She devised and executed action plans to enhance hygiene, mandating handwashing, bathing, and other asepsis and infection-control practices. During the Crimean War, she and her colleagues reduced the hospital’s mortality rate by one-third.
Florence Nightingale’s environmental theory comprises five components, including clean water and air, basic sanitation, cleanliness, and light, since she thought that a healthy atmosphere was crucial to the healing process. Nursing, according to Nightingale, should encompass the “proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, calm, and the precise selection and administration of nutrition — at the lowest possible cost to the patient’s vital vitality.” She remarked on the art of nursing, remarking, “The art of nursing, as it is now performed, seems to be created purposely to undermine what God intended disease to be, namely a reparative process.” In her paintings, Nightingale emphasizes the natural surroundings. According to her theory, Nightingale’s works provide a model of community health in which all aspects of an individual’s environment that affect their health are considered.
According to Florence Nightingale, the nurse must use the patient’s surroundings to aid in recovery and reintegration. The patient’s surroundings are significant since they might affect their health favorably or adversely. According to Nightingale’s idea, environmental variables that impact health include clean air and water, appropriate food and nutrition, proper drainage, cleanliness, and light or direct sunshine. Without these characteristics, the patient’s recovery will be impeded. Nightingale also highlighted the need for recovering patients in a serene, pleasant setting. The approach also requires nurses to analyze a patient’s nutritional requirements, record the time of food intake, and examine how the patient’s diet impacts their health and rehabilitation.
This examination of theory concludes with a discussion of Florence Nightingale’s contributions to critical thinking in nursing. In addition, her theory is crucial for bridging knowledge gaps regarding the holistic aspect of the nursing process, so empowering students and nurses to make the most appropriate practical judgments. Nurses must embrace the holistic nursing concept and assumptions of Florence Nightingale since patients need compassionate nurses who are attentive to the whole range of human needs and have nursing abilities. Nightingale’s legacy helps us achieve these goals since her ideology emphasizes self-care, art, and nursing science and incorporates related theory.