What is the importance of Florence Nightingale?

Florence Nightingale is considered the founder of modern nursing. The myth of the nurse as a guardian angel to the patient's bedside, starring Florence, will typically be a social construction of English romanticism, in full Victorian.

Let us remember, however, some of the problems that emerged to hospital nursing ashore in Britain until the mid-19th century, dominated by matrons and nurses, the sisters of charity:

• Sporadic work, disqualified, socially undervalued and underpaid;
• Crude application of medical care;
• The absence of specificity of functional and technical autonomy;
• Highly painful working conditions in hospitals and in worhouses;
• Difficulties in the recruitment of staff;
• Lack of training structures, etc.

In addition to technically disqualified, matrons and nurses had often behaved morally wrong. The registration books of most British hospitals of the era report of impressive frequency of cases of nurses who were dismissed by alcoholism, insolence, lack of discipline, absenteeism, theft or extortion practiced in patient person.

Nightingale attacked these problems by creating a system based on training, workout, dedication, in iron discipline and strong hierarchical stratification, according to a mixed model, conventual and military.