How very little can be done under the state of fear. - Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)
Walking tent to tent during the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale carried about a lamp to guide her. And that is why suffering soldiers, aided by her presence, called her the "lady with the lamp." The light of her leadership would one day illuminate a new age in nursing.
Prior to Nightingale, nursing was often a shoddy profession populated by nurses that were sometimes dirty, disheveled, and drunk. After Nightingale, nursing gradually grew into one of the most respected pathways to caregiving.
Nightingale understood the need for cleanliness and discipline. Yet, she also knew that true caregiving was grounded not in fear, but in Love. It was Love that caused her to leave her rich and comfortable life to travel to the battlefields of war. She responded to her calling.
One would think her arrival on the battlefield with her own band of nurses to aid the sick and wounded would have been greeted with joy. Instead, she was ridiculed by doctors who resented her presence.
Why is Love so often rewarded with anger and hostility? What is it we fear?
Nightingale spent her long life advancing nursing and caregiving. Although she was plagued for the last half of her life with chronic fatigue syndrome, the lady with the lamp championed nursing from Europe to America.
Recognizing both the advantages and limitations of treating patients in institutions, Nightingale wrote: "Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization." She would no doubt be disappointed to see how much compassion has been frustrated by so many leaders in hospital nursing.
So much of the caregiving load in America is carried by women. Perhaps, that is what caused this valiant leader to write, in 1852, "Women never have a half-hour in all their lives (excepting before or
after anybody is up in the house) that they can call their own, without
fear of offending or of hurting someone."
With respect to love and compassion, have we progressed in nursing since Nightingale's time or not? If not, what can we do to restore the loving care of the past?
-Erie Chapman
