Florence Nightingale’s Perspective on Good Nursing Practice and its Opportunities to develop Nursing
This article deals with the topic “Florence Nightingale’s Perspective on Good Nursing Practice.” this topic has been chosen to be able to share views on the impact of Nightingale on nursing, and its effect on today’s healthcare delivery.
There are many practicing nurses as well as a lot of more nursing students who enter the profession at regular times and they need to understand the importance of good nursing practice for good nursing care. Furthermore, the male aspect of the profession as well as the advancements in the industry due to technology are addressed. Nursing authorities in the industry could thus base on these results to develop and improve on the nursing profession.
Nightingale’s environmental theory has become the basis for good nursing practice in the healthcare industry. It is deduced from the theory that a major contributing factor in patient recovery is the environment. It is important for nurses to put the patient in the best position for nature to act on them; which means it is the nurse’s responsibility to reduce noise in the environment, to relieve patients’ anxieties, and to help them sleep well.
As part of good environmental conditions to help the patient’s recovery, there should be good ventilation, good room temperature, good drainage system, enough room lightings, proper bedding system, cleanliness for both the nurse and the patient and taking care of patient’s nutritional needs. These guidelines helped Nightingale, during the Crimean war, to reduce the death rate from 42% before her involvement as the lead nurse to 2%.
The impact of Nightingale on the nursing profession, the 21st century healthcare delivery has seen significant changes. There is a shift from the mere traditional methods of taking care of patients to a more enhanced and technologically based system of healthcare delivery. There are many healthcare devices today, which are based on modern technologies that did not exist before. These devices have aided and improved on patients’ recoveries.
Now, there is minimal margins of error by healthcare professionals. Deaths resulting from mistakes made by physicians and other caregivers have reduced drastically. Healthcare professionals can now monitor the progress of their patient’s, give advice to and counsel them on health issues remotely at the comfort of their homes, thanks to the telehealth care technology. This has reduced the amount of time patients spend to assess healthcare services and the time needed by caregivers to attend to the health needs of their patients. It has also eased the congestions that used to culminate at the various healthcare centers in time past. Nurses, being the forefront liners in healthcare delivery, have contributed immensely towards these changes that have swept across the healthcare industry.
Nursing has long been associated with women. Interestingly, in the olden days, men made up most of the nursing staffs. A school of thought believe that, there are few male nurses today because of some pronouncements of Nightingale to the effect that, nursing naturally comes with women and that every woman is a potential nurse. This notwithstanding, there are enormous benefits in having more male nurses in the industry. There are some male patients who feel comfortable being attended to and taking care of by men. They open-up easily to them as compared to their female counterparts. This helps to obtain in-depth knowledge about their health conditions. Men also have the advantage of being assigned many different jobs across the various departments in the nursing field. There is an added advantage on male nurses with their strength in handling tasks that require more of the physical abilities than women.
In conclusion, the efforts of Florence Nightingale to bring the nursing occupation from the image of decadence to what we see today cannot be overemphasized. We, nurses, owe it a duty to continue upholding her guiding principles for good nursing care to celebrate her good memories daily in our professional duties. As we do so, we should also be abreast with the numerous advancements in healthcare delivery in our time. We should endeavor to upgrade our skills and knowledge in nursing care from time to time, especially in technology-based methods of health delivery to benefit our patients.
Furthermore, knowing the importance of male nurses in the healthcare industry, there is the need to encourage more men to take up nursing as a profession by deliberately taking steps to remove all the bottlenecks, if possible, that are hindering men from getting involved by healthcare authorities. Such setbacks may include gender biases, discrepancies between male and female nurses emoluments and benefits, difficulties faced by male students in getting admission into nursing schools, creating incentives such as scholarships for male students who decide to take up nursing as a profession, etc. This will help develop the nursing profession that we all yearn for.
Charles Owusu
Nursing Student
TUAS
Tiina Nurmela
Principal Lecturer, PhD
TUAS