Florence Nightingale: A Woman in Power
SUCCESS STORY.
By Abby Voyen | Nursing Major
It was the spring of 1854 and the Crimean war was in full swing. Reports of the sick and wounded angered the British population, their soldiers were not in good care. There were very few nurses who wanted to step up and minister to the sick and suffering. In October, Florence Nightingale — a born leader divinely called to be a nurse — gathered a team and set off to the makeshift hospital in Scutari, Turkey. The team of nurses she scrounged up consisted of Roman Catholic sisters, Anglican sisters of mercy, nurses from St. Johns Institute and other various hospitals. Little did they know under the guidance of Nightingale, they would change the face of nursing for the better (Bloy). Born into a wealthy home, Nightingale could have chosen a relaxed life filled with all the luxuries she wanted, but that wasn’t the path she decided on. She is one of the most famous nurses to the day because of her work during the Crimean war and her success cannot be credited to only one source. Florence Nightingale was able to turn the disadvantage of being a woman in the 1800’s into an advantage, benefit from her cultural legacy and capitalize on the timing and the meaningful work presented to her.
Florence Nightingale was able to turn the disadvantage of being a woman in the 1800’s into an advantage, benefit from her cultural legacy and capitalize on the timing and the meaningful work presented to her.
The 1800’s was a high peak for women’s suffrage and as Kelley Smith wrote, “some compared the conditions of women’s lives in this time to a form of slavery.” They had many obligations and few choices, their husband had the rights to everything a women owned, including her body. Born into a wealthy family, Florence Nightingale was destined to marry another wealthy man, receive an inheritance from her father, raise a family, and never work a day in her life. Florence wasn’t like most women of her status. She had a calling and chose to follow it despite being a woman. Nightingale saw how men were in power and women just had to sit back and take the oppression, she took the oppression and used it to her advantage. Florence Nightingale was an underdog, she had the cards stacked against her, author Malcolm Gladwell writes in his book, David and Goliath, describing underdogs, “And the fact of being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to to appreciate: it can open doors and create opportunities and educate and enlighten and make possible what might seem unthinkable” (8). They needed nurses during the war and only women tended to the sick and needy, Nightingale knew it was her calling to help. At the time, they refused to hire female nurses in Crimea because of the poor reputation left behind by previous nurses (History Staff). She knew that women nurses were leaving a poor taste in many British citizen’s mouths so she took the opportunity and proved to those people that there were strong women out there who could do the job correctly and with dignity. Nightingale’s strong personality wasn’t easily persuaded or told what to do. She exuded a tough leader persona and was described as, “notoriously difficult to get on with, or even approach” (Stanley and Sherratt).
During the war she was under tremendous pressure and worked in repulsive conditions so her strict control found order in all of the madness. The makeshift hospital sat on a cesspool and lacked the supplies and resources for the soldiers needs. In the hospital, “there were no vessels for water or utensils of any kind; no soap, towels, or clothes, no hospital clothes; the men laying around in their uniforms, stiff with gore and covered with filth to a degree and of a kind no one could write about; their persons covered with vermin…” (Bloy). Nightingale had experienced working on horrifying injuries and battle wounds that most women in that day of age would never have seen. Over the course of being at that vile hospital she learned how to be a leader; she wasn’t always nice but she made a lasting impact. Sister Jospeh Croke describes Nightingale as, “sweet amiable, gentle when she is merely doing the lady… but when she wants to domineer she has a way of putting completely aside all her womanish qualities” (Stanley and Sherratt). Nightingale knew what she had to do to fix a problem and she refused to stop until the the wound was cleaned, the soldiers were fed or the vomit was gone. Nightingale turned her disadvantage of being a woman with not a lot of power into an advantage by telling oppression to take a hike and becoming a desperately needed leader in the hospital in Scutari. No one would have guessed that Nightingale would become the leader she did and cause the change that she did because women didn’t have control. Women didn’t even have control over their bodies so the impact that Nightingale left was immense. Nightingale, “forged new paths and lived as a role model, demonstrating opportunities for women seeking to embrace independent lives” (Stanley and Sherratt). She used her power as a woman to go out into the world and show men and most importantly women that women are capable of anything they are passionate about. Even as a Victorian woman, she held a position of power, which didn’t happen very often during that time period.
During the 19th century, social classes were clearly separated and defined. The wealthy wore corsets, suits and ties, had toilets that flushed and hired nannies to take care of the children. Another luxury that they had was extra tutoring and extended school during the summer to keep up with their studies. A study from John Hopkins University by Karl L. Anderson shows the effects of the learning gap between students from low, middle, and high income families. The results show that test scores from the beginning of school are much higher in the high income families versus the children from lower income families. The test scores at the end of the school year show similar results from every class of income. This confirms the summer learning gap and that students from lower income families are at a disadvantage and are less likely to get ahead and be successful. John L. Alexander writes, “first, achievement scores at any level of schooling predict success at the next level. This holds for high school completion, college attendance, college completion, and later success in the labor market.” With this said, that should put Florence Nightingale at a very high advantage in her life. Her father William, a wealthy landowner who inherited two estates; Francis, her mother, coming from a family of merchants, belonged to elite social circles (History Staff). By the age of 17, Florence Nightingale felt her calling to be a nurse. She claims that she received a calling from God, saying “God has spoken to me and called me to his service” (British Heritage). It was a huge deal that she chose nursing because of the advantages she had such as the summer learning opportunity, and yet she still chose a lower class job. She is what author Malcolm Gladwell would consider an outlier, in his book Outliers: The Story of Success. He writes about how successful people make it and the opportunities they had, he writes, “are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and make sense of the world in ways others cannot” (19). During this time period, nursing was stereotyped as a lower class occupation and had a social standing as little better than prostitutes (British Heritage). It was also said that nursing was a career with a poor reputation and “hangers-on” who followed the armies around (“Florence Nightingale”). Florence Nightingale was set to follow in her parent’s footsteps and marry a suitable, wealthy man and live the life of luxury, yet she chose the exact opposite. She chose to follow her calling and set out to change the face of nursing. Her cultural legacy eventually benefited her in her nursing career but proved detrimental in the beginning. Her family carries a high social status and has for many generations, she was supposed to continue the family legacy, marry wealthy and remain in the same elite social circles. Nightingale had no desire to stray from her calling. Nightingale’s decision to continue practicing nursing was contrary to her “station in society” (“Florence Nightingale”). Her mother advocated the most against her being a nurse. At one point her mother even banned Nightingale from pursuing it. Her family and cultural legacy hindered her pursuit of a nursing career at the beginning but untimely failed to stop her in the long run. What her cultural legacy did affect was her work ethic, personality and drive. People of status tend to carry a sense of pride, entitlement and taste for nothing but the best. Nightingale at the hospital in Scutari was strict and harsh to the other nurses because she expected them to do their job the right way. She earned a position of power due to her stubborn personality and perfectionist ways.
During the mid 1800’s, the Crimean war erupted. Nurses to take care of the thousands of wounded, sick and dying soldiers were scarce. The lack of nurses created a huge problem for a few reasons: the nurses were outnumbered greatly by soldiers and weren’t able to tend to everyone in a timely manner. The other reason is that because the nurses that were there were so busy, they didn’t have time to feed, change, and clean the people or disinfect the makeshift war hospitals. Death rates were skyrocketing “More soldiers were dying from infectious diseases like typhoid and cholera than from injuries incurred in battle” (History Staff). In the years leading to the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale had begun studying and training nursing, volunteering at hospitals, and spending time with the sick and poor. She began noticing the simplest of procedures killing patients, an example would be bloodletting. Nightingale was learning nursing in a time where they needed reform, they needed change and they needed to figure out how to save more people than they killed. Nightingale emerged onto the nursing scene at the time they needed her the most. Malcolm Gladwell explains in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, the importance of timing and that hard work is not enough to lead to extraordinary success. Professor John C. Dencker writes about Bill Gates and the opportunities that were presented to him because of timing. “Yet he also shows that gates benefited from opportunities not available to most people, one of which that he was born at the right moment in time to take advantage of increasing access to computers.” Gladwell also shows a correlation between the success of Canadian hockey players and their birthdays. The players that have birthdays in the first three months of the year have more opportunities compared to the kids at the end of the year because of when the birthday deadline cuts off. A Study by the PLOS ONE, a scientific journal database looked into the correlation between NHL hockey players and their birthdays. The journal writes, “Relative age effects are perhaps most often associated with Canadian ice hockey, where nearly 40% of players on elite junior teams are born in the first quarter of the year, meaning that, because of a January 1 cut-off date, they would have been consistently older than their age group peers.” The results of their study showed that 36% of NHL players drafted were born in the first quarter of the year and 14.5% came from the fourth quarter (Deaner, Lowen and Cobley). The kids in those early birthday months get the better coaches, more ice time and enhanced training, and also they are older. The kids born in January are almost a year older than those born in December, that can be associated with their growth and strength. Due to their birthday’s, those hockey players receive more opportunities than the other kids with the later birthdays and have a better chance at success. For Florence Nightingale, the Crimean war was her special opportunity where she became one of the most famous nurses to the day all because of when the war broke out. She was in her prime years as a nurse, young and active, passionate and motivated. If the war had never started and if the conditions of the healthcare field weren’t at an all time low, Florence Nightingale might not have been recognized as the hero she was and might not have had the opportunity to make an impact like she did. She was able to go into that hospital on the cesspool, clean the entire building and equipment, and provide the soldiers with the care and supplies they needed.
Even with the monumentally changes Florence Nightingale preformed, death rates continued to rise. However, death rates were dramatically reduced when she figured out the real cause of the sicknesses: the ventilation and sewer system. The death rates were reduced only because Florence Nightingale saw his job as meaningful work. Gladwell writes about the importance of meaningful work with the story of Louis and Regina Borgenicht. They were Jewish immigrants coming from Poland and Hungary, they only had enough money to last them a few weeks. Louis walked the streets of Manhattan and came up with an idea to sell children’s aprons. He knew it was going to take him and his wife countless hours to get this clothing business going but that didn’t seem burdensome to him. It was meaningful. Gladwell writes in Outliers, “when the Borgenicht came home at night to his children, he may have been tired and poor and overwhelmed but he was alive. He was his own boss… And in his work, there was a relationship between effort and reward: the longer he and Regina stayed up at night sewing aprons, the more money they made the next day on the streets” (149). The amount of work didn’t matter to them, they were passionate about what they were doing and the hours meant nothing. Florence Nightingale saw meaning and a purpose in herself performing her nursing job and helping these soldiers live was her goal. The more she saved the better and she found meaning in that. She worked endlessly to care for the soldiers, that was her life day in and day out and she didn’t care how revolting the job was at times. She scrubbed the floors on her hands and knees, cleaned vomit and urine off of people, and stayed up far pasted midnight to make sure everyone was taken care of. She didn’t care about the stereotype of nurses and especially didn’t care about how much she got paid. Nightingale became successful because of the time and effort she put into her job; it was easy for her to get up every morning and go because it was significant to her.
The Crimean war caused roughly 21,000 British deaths. 2,755 deaths were from being killed in action, 2,019 died from wounds and 16,323 died of disease (“The Crimean War”). 76% of the deaths were from disease such as cholera and typhoid. Florence Nightingale’s legacy was created based off of her work from this war. She worked long, hard hours cleaning the hospital and patients and pushing for better ventilation and a working sewer system. Nightingale used her cultural legacy but also had to challenge it because a person of her status didn’t become a nurse. Even though nursing was considered lower class and frowned upon in society at the time, Nightingale saw it as meaningful work and was able to start taking steps to change the stereotype towards it. Her success as a nurse cannot be sourced to only one contributor. She was able to not only change the sanitary conditions of hospitals, but change society’s outlook on nursing due to turning the disadvantage of being a woman into an advantage, her cultural legacy and benefiting from the timing of the Crimean war and the meaningful work that is nursing.
Works Cited
Alexander, Karl L. Entwisle, Doris R. Steffel Olson, Linda. “Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap.” American Sociological Review. 72.2 (2007): 167–180. 27 April 2016.
Bloy, Marjie. “Florence Nightingale (1820–1910).” Victorian Web. N.p., 3 Jan. 2012. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Deaner, Robert O., Aaron Lowen, and Stephen Cobley27. “Born at the Wrong Time: Selection Bias in the NHL Draft.” PLOS ONE:. N.p., 27 Feb. 2013. Web. 12 May 2016.
Dencker, John C. “Outliers: The Story Of Success.” Academy Of Management Perspectives 24.3 (2010): 97–99. Business Source Premier. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.
Gladwell, Malcolm. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. New York: Little, Brown Company. 2013. Print
— -. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown and Company. 2008. Print.
History.com Staff. “Florence Nightingale.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, 01 Jan. 2009. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.
“Nightingale, Florence.” UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 27 Apr. 201
Smith, Kelley. “Lives of Women in the Early 1800s.” Lives of Women in the Early 1800s. N.p., 16 Jan. 2002. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
STANLEY, DAVID, and AMANDA SHERRATT. “Lamp Light On Leadership: Clinical Leadership And Florence Nightingale.” Journal Of Nursing Management 18.2 (2010): 115–121. EBSCO MegaFILE. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.
“The Crimean War (1853–1856).” The Crimean War (1853–1856). The History Guys, 25 May 2015. Web. 12 May 2016
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Abby Voyen, a freshmen at Bethel University, seeks to get into the nursing program and become a labor and delivery nurse. Voyen likes the McDonalds Diet Coke, every kind of dog, and horror movies.
WHAT I’VE LEARNED:
Snacks are a necessity. Cookies, pancakes, bagels, brownies, donuts… anything and everything.
10,000 hours is a must when seeking success
Always name dogs. Be descriptive and never be vauge.
Money isn't everything. It can be detrimental when trying to teach the younger generation about the importance of hard work.
Being dyslexic can be a good thing. It’s a desirable difficulty. Being a dyslexic is normally seen as an issue but in certain situations people can benefit and turn that obstacle into an advantage.
Share when you feel moved. Make sure to feel moved or you dont get participation points.
No ising and wasing. This goes along with naming doges and go the extra step to be more descriptive.
David was considered an underdog when he was about to take on Goliath. He used his disadvantages to his advantage and played by his own rules to defeat the giant Goliath.
Robert Oppenheimer tried to poison his tutor. He was able to talk his way out of a murdar rap by using his practical intelligence. He knew what to say, when to say it, and to who to say it to.
Optimal writing hours are early in the morning.
There is no such thing as a writers block. Just write until your thoughts start flowing.
Those moments when Scott asked a specific person, “what time is it?” and they respond with the actual time and then he asks again, “what time is it?” and then we all get it and respond with, “it’s sharing time”. It’s always sharing time to Scott.
