A Tribute to Florence Nightingale

If you ask Dr. Jackie Murphree who her hero is, she will tell you that it is Florence Nightingale. In fact, some of her friends call her “Flo,” and she has been known to dress as her hero on occasion. She has taught the history of nursing dressed as Miss Nightingale and has appeared at student nurses’ pinning ceremonies on occasion.

It is fitting to remember Miss Nightingale as her birthday is just around the corner (May 12), which always coincides with the National Nurses Week celebration each year. She became known as the “The Lady with the Lamp” as she made her rounds at night checking on patients with a small lamp in her hand. Henry Longfellow wrote a poem in 1857 which immortalizes this image, “Santa Filomena:”

Lo! In that hour of misery

A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom,

And flit from room to room.

Why is Florence Dr. Murphree’s hero? She will tell you that it was Miss Nightingale that elevated nursing to the image it enjoys today. In Victorian England, nurses were considered to be the “dregs” of society.

They were usually prostitutes, drunkards, and thieves who were given the option by the English courts to go to prison or take care of the sick. Miss Nightingale’s wealthy family opposed her desire to become a nurse because of nursing’s poor reputation, but she persisted and did so anyway. History records the wonderful things she accomplished in her lifetime as a nurse.

One of the most notable was opening the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London to train nurses. Her book, Notes on Nursing, written in 1860, provided the cornerstone for the school’s curriculum and for other nursing schools. Her ideas still influence nursing education today.

Dr. Murphree has spent much of her career teaching the history of nursing and promoting Florence Nightingale’s beliefs about nursing as they are still relevant today. She says that our nursing students represent a future of the profession that can perpetuate the beautiful traditions Miss Nightingale created.

Jackie Murphree, RN, MNSc, EdD is the Assistant Director for Advanced Practing Nursing for the Arkansas State Board of Nursing.