Research Paper on:
Crimean War and Nightingale

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during that war was highly influential on the subsequent nursing theory of Florence Nightingale. Prior to Nightingales career, nurses lacked training and they had the "reputation of being coarse, ignorant  women" (OConnor, Robertson and Davidson, 2003). A physician, writing in the 1800s, described nurses as "dull unobservant women; of the best it could only be said that they were kindly"  (Tourville and Ingalls, 2003, p. 21). Nightingale changed this perception and, in essence, created the modern conception of nursing. When Nightingale first arrived in the Crimea, cholera and typhus  were rampant in the hospital and soldiers were 7 times more likely to die in the military hospital from disease than they were on the battlefield (OConnor, Robertson and Davidson,  2003). Once Nightingale realized that what the appalling mortality rate at Scutari was due to "appalling environmental and sanitary conditions," she began to address this issue(Salvage, 2001, p. 172).  She established a fresh water supply and used her own money to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables for the patients. She collected data, organized hospital records and instituted processes for  accurate record keeping, and then proved conclusively through her calculations that sanitations improvement resulted in a decrease in deaths (Tourville and Ingalls, 2003). The author of over 200 books, she  is considered to have written the first nursing textbook, Notes on Nursing (OConnor, Robertson and Davidson). As this suggests, Nightingale is considered to be the first nursing theorist and  to have ushered in the era of modern nursing. (Tourville and Ingalls, 2003). Her accomplishment include "improving health care, developing nursing schools, and improving sanitation conditions in hospitals" (Tourville and  Ingalls, 2003, p. 21). Rather than accepting anyone willing to do the work as a "nurse," Nightingale argued that nurses should be well educated. Interestingly, she also argued that