She went on to produce her famous diagrams, which demonstrated the high proportion of soldiers’ deaths caused by disease as opposed to battle wounds, and became the first woman admitted to the London Statistical Society in 1858. During and after the Crimean War, Nightingale seized on statistics as a way of proving the effectiveness of different interventions. Good dataĭuring her youth, Nightingale’s father had introduced her to a leading practitioner of statistics, then a brand-new academic field, and paid for her to have a mathematics tutor. She encouraged soldiers to read, write and socialise during their convalescence so they would not sink into boredom and alcoholism. But Nightingale also recommended a more holistic approach to health. Notes on Nursing also called upon the “mistress” of every building to clean “every hole and corner” of her home regularly for the sake of her family’s health. Dirty carpets and unclean furniture, she wrote with characteristic bluntness, “pollute the air just as much as if there were a dung heap in the basement”. In her view, all domestic interiors must be kept clean.
#Nightingale home health windows#
Nightingale strongly counselled that people open windows to maximise light and ventilation and displace “stagnant, musty and corrupt” air, and she advocated improving drainage to combat waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid.
#Nightingale home health how to#
There was straightforward advice on everything from how to avoid excessive smoke from fireplaces (don’t let the fire get too low, and don’t overwhelm it with coal) to the safest material with which to cover walls (oil paints, not wallpaper). It advised ordinary people how to maintain healthy homes – particularly women, in accordance with the worldview of the times. Nightingale’s book Notes on Nursing was more of a public health instruction book than a nursing manual. (The same is true today: in Wuhan’s coronavirus outbreak, around 75–80% of transmissions were reportedly in family clusters.) This was the place where most people contracted and suffered from infectious diseases. Like many public health experts of her age, Nightingale considered the home to be a crucial site for disease-preventing interventions. Nightingale’s attention to international medical research and developments was just one factor behind her ability to make effective interventions in public health. This was relatively new advice, first publicised by Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis in the 1840s, who had observed the dramatic difference it made to death rates on maternity wards. Florence Nightingaleĭuring the Crimean War (1853–1856), Nightingale had implemented hand washing and other hygiene practices in British army hospitals. In her book Notes on Nursing (1860), she wrote that:Įvery nurse ought to be careful to wash her hands very frequently during the day. You can learn about FNINR's journey with their 25-year history brochure.Her approach to caring for wounded soldiers and training nurses in the 19th century saved and improved countless lives, and her ideas on how to stay healthy still resonate today – as politicians give official guidance on how best to battle coronavirus.įind out more in this article that is republished from The Conversation, under Creative Commons licence CC BY-ND 4.0.įor example, although Nightingale did not fully subscribe to the idea that many diseases are caused by specific microorganisms, known as germs, until she was in her 60s, in the 1880s, she was well aware of the importance of hand washing. With the continuing leadership provided by NINR and the support of FNINR, nurse researchers will continue to contribute to the enhanced health and well-being of all Americans, especially in a time when cost-effectiveness and quality of care are equally championed by the public and the Nation’s decision makers. The health care community faces new challenges and opportunities to improve patient care each year. They recognize the illness and the presence of health risk factors affecting the overall well-being of individuals. Nurse researchers are grounded in clinical nursing practice and focused on the physical, mental, emotional and social needs of patients. The Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research (FNINR) is an independent, non-profit organization founded in 1993. FNINR’s VISION is to improve health through expanding support for NINR.įNINR's MISSION is to strengthen and magnify NINR’s impact in advancing nursing science.
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