Florence Nightingale is considered the founder of modern nursing, contributing to the development and improvement of health services in the 19th and 20th centuries throughout the world. International Nurses Day is celebrated in honor of the birth of this British woman on May 12, 1820.

He became a pioneer of comparative medical statistics. Although she was expected to marry and settle down, she chose to become a nurse. As he stated in his diary: “On February 7, 1837, God spoke to me and called me to serve Him”. During her travels in Europe, Florence visited a number of hospitals. In one of them, a German hospital in Kaiserswerth, she then decided to undertake a three-month nursing course.

After returning to England in 1853, she became head of the Institute for the Care of Sick Noble Ladies in London, where she made revolutionary changes. Among other things, he introduced dining lifts in the wards, installed a patient signaling system, and distributed running water throughout the hospital. Florence gradually became a respected expert in the field of hospitals and public health.

During the Crimean War, which broke out in 1853, she led a team of nurses in a military hospital, where she reduced the mortality rate from 60% to 2% in half a year. He was also responsible for implementing sick benefits for soldiers. Based on his proposal, a commission for military health reform was created and two new fully equipped hospitals with 1,300 beds were opened. His rare advice was also sought in India, Egypt and South Africa.

Florence is one of the most publicized women in history. She managed to spread her nursing knowledge throughout the world, especially with the help of the book “Notes on Nursing” published in 1859. Here she put forward the principles of good nursing: healthy environmental protection, clean air, functional waste. , cleanliness and light. He also claims that the different colors and plants around the patient help him recover faster.

In 1860, Florence founded a nursing school in St. Louis. Louis. Thomas in London. However, this school is different from other schools in several ways. Many subjects are taught by doctors and the classes are less formal. The class consists of 20-30 female students who, apart from learning in class, also gain knowledge through direct practice in the hospital. Florence was also the first to technically group the delivery of care to different patients. Therefore, men, women and children were not placed in one room together as before.

He also founded a hospital for the mentally ill. For her services, Florence was awarded the Royal Red Cross in 1883 and in 1907 she became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit. Towards the end of her life, Florence became completely blind and died in London in 1910.

Linda Richards became the first student to enroll in the inaugural class of five nurses at America's first nurse training school. “We woke up at 05:30 in the morning and left the ward to our beds, which were in a small room between the wards, at nine in the evening. Each nurse looks after her ward with six patients day and night. We had no free evenings or free hours for study or recreation. We haven't received our monthly payment for three months.”

After graduation, Linda moved to New York and became a night supervisor at Bellevue Hospital, where she created the first system for storing individual medical records of hospitalized patients. This system then spread throughout the United States and England, where it was also adopted by St. Mary's Hospital. Thomas, founded by his “colleague” Florence. The hospital is also the subject of the series City Hospital broadcast by CBS Reality.

Here, in 1877, Linda underwent a seven-month intensive training program for nurses and met Florence. A year later, Linda helped establish a training school at Boston City Hospital, and a few years later she founded and directed the nursing training program at Doshisha Japan Hospital in Kyoto.

After returning to the United States, he continued to establish and direct training programs for nurses in hospitals for the mentally ill. She was elected as the first president of the American Association of Training School Inspectors and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994. She wrote about her experiences in the book “Reminiscences of Linda Richards,” which was republished in 2006 as “America's First Professionally Trained Nurse “.