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Researchers have been long resigned to the fact that
Nightingale's career remains unknown to most nurses.
Of the two most often cited biographies on Nightingale-by
Edward Cook and Woodham-Smith-Monteiro said she's never
met a nurse who has read either one. Nursing's continuing
unawareness of Nightingale, Marie-Beck said, is the
result of the industry's nearly exclusive focus on individual
health and treatment, rather than community health and
promotion.
"Because we focus our lens down to the narrowest
aperture … we've lost our ability to see what she
did as a nursing discipline," Marie-Beck said.
"That's why we've lost sight of the larger Nightingale.
We've lost our ability to look across the continuum,
to look across the community."
Some researchers today are looking to bring fresh light
to the Nightingale legacy. They say they are trying
to go beyond the myths or mean-spirited caricatures
that fail to account for her humanity.
McDonald leads a team of Nightingale researchers who
are in the midst of publishing a multivolume set of
Nightingale's entire record of correspondence. McDonald
said too many historians and researchers are depending
on secondary resources to investigate Nightingale, rather
than her own words and deeds. Two recent books about
Nightingale, by authors Barbara Montgomery Dossey and
Hugh Smalls, take on some of the revisionist backlash
against Nightingale, especially those who paint her
as a shrewd, ego-driven opportunist or even a mythic
fraud.
Dossey and Marie-Beck also are teaming up to write
a book about what Nightingale still can teach nursing:
Florence Nightingale-Blueprint for 21st Century Health
Care.
What would Nightingale think of nursing and health
care today? Marie-Beck believes she would have disliked
the development of a business model in medicine. But
she would have loved to see the expanding professionalism
of nursing and the central role that nurses play in
the health care model.
"I think she would be impressed with what we've
accomplished," Marie-Beck said. "Nurses are
right-brained and left-brained, and they bring that
emotional concern for the patient. They care for that
mental piece of the disease process when they talk to
patients and address the families that need spiritual
help.
"Nightingale would be very excited."
Contact Glen Fest at glenf@nurseweek.com
Shining Light (First
part of this two-part series)
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