International Nurses Day - History and significance...

S Venkateshwari

International Nurses Day - history and significance...


Although nursing has been practiced since antiquity, it was Florence Nightingale who popularized the formal nursing profession as we know it today. In observance of Nightingale's birth anniversary, international Nurses Day is observed in May of each year. Perhaps the most well-known nurse in the entire world, Florence Nightingale is credited with founding modern nursing via her contributions to the advancement of the medical field.

Date: Since Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy, May 12 is recognized annually as international Nurses Day.

History and significance: Florence Nightingale was an english social reformer and statistician in addition to being regarded as the creator of modern nursing. In addition to making a significant positive impact on the health sector, she wrote more than 150 books, booklets, and studies on health-related topics.

Known as the "Lady with the lamp," she is renowned for tending to the injuries sustained by british soldiers in the Crimean War, which raged from 1853 to 1856. She became the first woman to ever get the order of merit when she was granted it in 1907. In 1860, she established a nursing school at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, establishing the groundwork for professional nursing and elevating the status of the field. Her early ability for mathematics led her to become a pioneer in the use of pie charts and other visual representations of information, which at the time was a relatively novel way to convey data. William Playfair created pie charts for the first time in 1801.

The famous "Lady with the Lamp" helped to establish nursing education in india in 1867 at St. Stevens Hospital in Delhi, ushering in the era of knowledgeable and kind professional nurses. Renowned worldwide for their contributions to nursing are Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, the founder of the American red Cross, Mary Ezra Mahoney, the first African-American to graduate from a nursing program, and virginia Lynch, who is considered the mother of forensic nursing.

Nursing was first mainly concerned with treating troops who had been injured in battle or during pandemics, but as time went on, it developed into a vital and multidata-faceted field of medicine on a worldwide scale. These days, nurses are the healthcare system's main engines.



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