According to Polit (2012), several would agree that research in nursing began with Florence Nightingale. She saved thousands of soldier’s lives during the Crimean War by improving the military hospital’s unsanitary conditions. She then later helped build medical reform by using statistical evidence to prove that more soldiers died as a result of unsanitary and undersupplied hospital conditions than were killed in action.
Nightingale’s Contribution to Research and Nursing Development Fee and Garofalo (2010) When Nightingale arrived at the military hospital in Scutari she discovered soldiers wounded and dying from horrifying sanitary conditions. She noticed that more soldiers were dying from the conditions than from battle itself. Nightingale found there was no clean linen, towels, basins, or soap; the clothes of the soldiers were swarming with bugs; the building structure itself was filthy; and rats were hiding under the beds.
Nightingale worked endlessly to correct the horrifying conditions and care for the previously poorly treated soldiers. Nightingale’s Shaping of the Multiple Metaparadigms of Nursing Monti and Tingen (1999) Nursing scientists are often in disagreement about the paradigms of nursing; however are in general agreement about the metaparadigms. A metaparadigm is a global description of the main concepts of a specific discipline. The main metaparadigm concepts of nursing are person, environment, nursing, and health (Monti & Tingen, 1999).
Nightingale made correlations between the environment (the unsanitary conditions in Scutari) and person (Crimean soldiers) and then worked to correct those conditions to improve the health of the soldiers and redefined nursing as a dignified profession. Conclusion Florence Nightingale earned her notorious title as the founder of modern nursing because of the observations and correlations she made (research) during the Crimean War. She argued that the reason so many soldiers were dying was due to the unsanitary conditions.She used statistical data to prove that improvements were necessary to save the lives of several soldiers.
References
Fee, E. , & Garofalo, M. E. (2010). Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War. American Journal of Public Health, 100(9), 1591. Monti, E. , & Tingen, M. (1999). Multiple paradigms of nursing science. Advances in Nursing Science, 21(4), 64-80. Polit, D. F. (2012). Nursing research: generating and assessing evidence for nursing practice (9th ed. ). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.
