st<\/sup>, 1854 Florence Nightingale and 38 female volunteer nurses traveled from the United Kingdom to the Ottoman Empire in modern history\u2019s first example of travel nurses filling crisis needs.<\/p>\nNightingale\u2019s journey from London to the Ottoman Hospital in Scutari took a grand total of 13 days. They first traveled by boat to a fishing village in Northern France named Boulogne-sur-Mer. They then traveled by land through Paris to Marseilles where they boarded a steamboat, The Vectis. They arrived by early November at the Scutari barracks in the suburbs of the capital Constantinople, Turkey.<\/p>\n
What Florence Nightingale and her team of volunteer nurses found was horrifying. The wounded were sleeping in overcrowded & filthy quarters without any blankets. Hygiene was being completely neglected resulting in mass infections. \u00a0Ten times more men were dying from diseases such as typhus, typhoid, cholera & dysentery than from injuries incurred from battle. While the doctors were understaffed, overworked and lacking sufficient medical supplies and they still didn\u2019t want the nurses\u2019 help. But after major battles they came to understand that they needed Florence Nightingale and her team of volunteer nurses.<\/p>\n
Upon witnessing the horrendous conditions first hand, Florence Nightingale sent a plea toThe Times<\/em>, one of London\u2019s most prominent news publications. Her plea was a public outcry for a government solution to enhance the conditions of the medical facilities. Upon her request, the British Government commissioned engineers to build a prefabricated hospital in London to ship to the Ottoman Empire. The result was a new hospital, The Renkioi Hospital, which had a death rate of less than 1\/10th<\/sup> that of the Scutari Hospital.<\/p>\nIn the prestigious Dictionary of National Biography<\/em>, Stephen Paget claimed that Nightingale reduced the death rate from 42% to 2% by either making improvements to sanitation herself or by mandating the Sanitary Commission. An example of a sanitation practice Nightingale is credited for was as basic as handwashing.<\/p>\nDuring her first Winter in Scutari, 4,077 soldiers died in the hospital mostly because of poor living conditions. Only 6 months after Nightingale\u2019s arrival, the British Government sent the Sanitary Commission to improve on the stale air & defective sewers Nightingale observed and wrote home about. The Commission flushed out the sewers and improved the ventilation which resulted in the massive drop in the death rate.<\/p>\n
During her time in the Ottoman Empire, the soldiers referred to Nightingale as \u201cThe Lady with the Lamp\u201d because after all other medical workers would go to sleep she would stroll through the corridors with a lamp checking on all those who needed medical assistance throughout the night. Nightingale became one of the most prominent Victorian Icons of the 19th<\/sup> century. An excerpt of The Times<\/em> wrote of Nightingale as<\/p>\n\u201cA \u2018ministering angel\u2019 without any exaggeration in these hospitals and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow\u2019s face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her prominence was recognized by foreign governments which consulted with her as the expert in hospital administration and sanitation.\u00a0 Upon her return to London, she established the first secular nursing school in the world, St. Thomas\u2019 Hospital which today is a part of King\u2019s College in London where she established the fabled Nightingale Pledge. The Florence Nightingale medal is the most prestigious international award in nursing.<\/p>\n
Nightingale was not only a pioneer in healthcare but for women and in the workforce in Victorian England. She wrote and published works to spread medical knowledge in simple English so that the undereducated could read and understand the knowledge. In an incredibly hierarchical Victorian England that was revolutionary at the time.<\/p>\n