Florence Nightingale Leadership Style

-------- I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse. --------- Florence Nightingale

The Leadership of Florence Nightingale and the Legacy She Made for Modern Nursing During the 19th century, things were different than they are today. People, culture, technology, and jobs have all changed dramatically. Florence Nightingale was one person that helped make some of these societal changes. In Nightingale’s time, there were a lot of sociopolitical constraints against women. Women weren’t allowed to inhabit leadership roles and for the most part, women were only allowed to work within their boundaries. Florence Nightingale left her privileged life to care for the sick and dying soldiers in the Crimean War for which

Nightingale created social reform in healthcare and nursing. The Nightingale Fund was established after reporting her findings during the Crimean War to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. She used the money to establish the Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas Hospital in London. She wrote the book “Notes on Nursing, What It Is and What It Is Not,” which provided direction on how to manage the ill. The school taught hospital and home care nurses how to teach other nurses. She was aware of the poor reputation of nurses and sought out to change the image of nursing. To improve overall conditions for nurses, she began working relationships with philanthropists, journalists, law makers, and administrators so that patient care would improve and respectable women would be drawn to the profession. Using her strong voice and determination, she fought constantly for healthcare reform for all individuals and sought for an improvement in health standards focusing on cleanliness and

“She envisioned what nursing could be and should be and set about bringing this vision to fruition. She created a model of nursing that persists to this day in the form of honor and respectability associated with nurses, highly structured nursing education, and holistic patient care approaches. She was ahead of her time, engaging in research and effecting sweeping policy changes when women were heavily discouraged from such endeavors.” She was a leader and reformer who led the way for the development of science based practice in the 21st century. “If we were to derive one simple lesson from Nightingale’s life and work, it would come from this single unifying thread that society has a big responsibility for the health of all its members.” Nursing has never been simple or easy, nor is serving as a patient advocate. However, it is important to include advocacy as a part of nursing. Advocacy is standing up for the rights of all individuals and must include interpersonal relationships between nurses, patients, professional colleagues, and the public. Nightingale’s experiences in nursing demonstrated to her the value of advocating for nurses and patients. She believed in the fact that all people were equal and thus believed should be treated as such and she used her leadership and advocacy skills to create change in