Lessons from the life of Florence Nightingale

by Charlotte A. Aikens

How to obtain the needed skill was a problem which she had studied for many years. The difficulties and moral dangers that stood in the way of a refined woman securing experience in nursing in a hospital seemed for years insuperable, and can hardly be appreciated by the nurses of today.

AT KAISERWERTH.

Through a friend, Miss Nightingale learned of an institution for deaconesses at Kaiserwerth, Germany, where there was a school, a hospital and a prison, under the management of deaconesses. It had a decidedly higher tone and reputation than prevailed in hospitals in general, she was told; and Pastor Fliedner’s annual reports of the work of the institution were eagerly studied, and used to silence parental objections. The opportunity to spend a few months at Kaiserwerth was delayed, but finally came when her mother and sister, in search of health, went to Carlsbad, and to travel. In commenting afterward on the new departure of giving some months of training in the care of the sick, inaugurated at Kaiserwerth, Miss Nightingale called special attention to the fact that the Kaiserwerth institutions had begun, not with programs or fullfledged schemes set forth in a prospectus, but with individual cases and personal devotion—and later years showed that her own great work began, also, not with a prospectus or prearranged program, but with actual doing of the thing she felt needed to be done when the opportunity came. The real training in nursing given at Kaiserwerth was far from satisfactory to her, but the atmosphere, the spirit of consecrated service, impressed her deeply.

Later she returned to Kaiserwerth for further apprenticeship in nursing and followed this experience by spending some time in the hospitals of Paris presided over by the Roman Catholic sisters. It is very evident that she did not expect to have everything she wished to know, prepared and presented to her to study. Her powers of observation were wonderful, and she proved an indefatigable collector of pamphlets, reports, statistics, methods of work and plans of hospital organization and management.

One criticism which is often heard of present day nurses in training is that they so quickly get into ruts in the matter of observation—that they see so much in a hospital ward which they fail to perceive—that they fail to gather practical knowledge pertaining to their work which is all around them waiting to be picked up. If Florence Nightingale had been the type of woman who had to have all the nursing knowledge which she obtained duly imparted to her by somebody else appointed for that purpose, her influence on the conditions which then prevailed would have been small indeed. Instead, she was constantly getting hold of facts, reading medical books, continually studying into the “why” of things, and how they might be improved, so that better general results might be obtained in the care of the sick. Her private notebooks were filled with facts, ideas, and suggestions gathered here, there and elsewhere, which she was later to use in laying broad foundations for the improvement of nursing, and of hospital management in general. Her attention to small details, as found in her notebooks preserved to the present day, was characteristic of all her work, and accounts in no small degree for its success.

TACT AND SENSE OF HUMOR.

Among the indispensable qualities for successful nursing, we place “TACT” very close to the top of the list. To get along with people without friction, to get needful things done without arousing antagonism, to have that keenness of perception, that ready power of appreciating and of doing or saying what is most fitting under the circumstances; to maintain, withal, that quality of mind which enables one to see the humorous side to otherwise difficult situations, are qualities to be coveted by every nurse.

How Florence Nightingale succeeded in managing committees with whom she had to work, as well as the sense of humor which helped to carry her over difficult situations, are admirably shown in extracts from her private letters, written soon after she returned from Kaiserwerth. She had been importuned to undertake the management of an institution known as an “Establishment for Gentlewomen During Illness,” which had been started, but had been so grossly mismanaged that it had been threatened with closure. A change of location had finally been decided on when Miss Nightingale agreed to undertake its management. One of the first difficulties which confronted her is described in the extract from a private letter to a friend which follows:

“My committee refused me to take in Catholic patients—whereupon I wished them good morning, unless I might also take in Jews and their Rabbis to attend them. So now it is settled, and in print, that we are to take in all denominations, whatever, and allow them to be visited by their respective priests and Muftis, provided I will receive (in any case whatsoever that is not of the Church of England) the obnoxious animal at the door, take him upstairs myself, remain while he is conferring with his patient, make myself responsible that he does not speak to, or look at, any one else, and bring him downstairs in a noose, and out into the street. And to this I have agreed! And this is in print!

“Amen. From committees, charity and schism—from the Church of England and other deadly sins—from philanthropy and all the deceits of the Devil—Good Lord deliver us!”