International day of the nurse.

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Today is Florence Nightingale's birthday and is recognised as the International day of the Nurse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nurses_Day

I know we have a couple of RNs on the boards and a heap of medics too. I hope you all get a pat on the back today, you do great work.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale

Florence Nightingale came to prominence during the Crimean War for her pioneering work in nursing, and was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night to tend injured soldiers. Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas's Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world.

[tercio67]

Thanks for reminding me, just called my girlfriend who is a nurse. She was pleased I 'remembered' it :).
I will send her some roses as well.

[IDF_TANKER]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale

Florence Nightingale came to prominence during the Crimean War for her pioneering work in nursing, and was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night to tend injured soldiers. Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas's Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world.

Curiously enough, there was also a famous Russian nurse at the same war, which also became iconic heroic figure of the war:

Dasha Sevastopolskaya (Darja Lavrentjevna Mikhailova) is a legendary figure of the Crimean war, and the first defense of Sevastopol. For 150 years after the war her name has been mentioned among the heroes of the first defense - admirals, officers and sailors. She was called "Sevastopolskaya" by the people, and Dasha was remembered under this name ever after.

Dasha was the first volunteer nurse in Russia, who attended the injured right after the battle and in the filed on battle. During the war a 17-year old girl, showed the example of courage to the famous commanders. Pirogov, a famous surgeon who arrived to Sevastopol to provide the operative medical care firstly heard of Dasha from the Duke Menshikov, a chief commander of Russian troops.

The deed of a young orphan from the lower class became known to the Russian emperor, Nikolay I. He was firstly told about Dasha by his sons - Michael and Nikolay, who were in Crimea that time. The emperor awarded the nurse with the gold medal on Vladimir's ribbon with the inscription "for devotion" and gave her 500 silver rubles. He also promised to award Dasha with 1000 silver rubles as a support when she gets married. It was very remarkable event, because as a rool such medal had been always awarded to those who already had 3 silver medals, which meant the Russian tsar highly appreciated Dasha's deed. This award was taken as a very exclusive one by Dasha's contemporaries, as she was the only representative of a lower class among Sevastopol heroes who was awarded not a silver but gold medal.

The archival documents say that in 1855 she got married to Private Maksim (Maxim) Khvorostov and got the 1000 rubles previously promised by the tsar. She is known to have lived in Sevastopol for the rest of her life and worked at one of the city hospitals. When she retired, the injured collected money to buy the icon of the Savior and presented it to Dasha. She died in Sevastopol in 1911.

The name of Darja Mikhailova, a legendary Dasha Sevastopolskaya takes up an honorable place in the history of the country among the other names Russia will also be proud of.
http://great.russian-women.net/Dasha_Sevastopolskaya.shtml

On related note, Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov, a Russian doctor participated in this war, is considered to be a father of field surgery:

He worked as an army surgeon in the Crimean War, arriving in Simferopol on December 11, 1854. From his works in the Crimea, he is considered to be the father of field surgery. He followed work by Louis Seutin in introducing plaster casts for setting broken bones, and developed a new osteoplastic method for amputation of the foot, known as the "Pirogov amputation". He was also the first to use anethesis in the field, particularly during the siege of Sevastopol, and he introduced a system of triage into five categories. He encouraged female volunteers as an organised corps of nurses, the Khrestovozvizhenska community of nurses established by Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, echoing the efforts made by Florence Nightingale for the British.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Ivanovich_Pirogov

Seems that a lot of innovation in the military medicine was going on at the time.

[Eoin666]

Wife and sister reminding me..........barbeque tonight, me and 6 nurses........sounds cool, but imagine the converstion!

[MN_Air]

Congratulations to all Nurses throughout the world, and thank you for everything you have done. I have seen the nursing program at our college, and damn you guys and gals are smart. Thank you again.

[SmoothieX12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale

Florence Nightingale came to prominence during the Crimean War for her pioneering work in nursing, and was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night to tend injured soldiers. Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas's Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world.

Great date. Russians in Sevastopol, however, responded with Dasha Sevastopolskaya, whose sculpture graces the perimeter of Rubo's Panorama Of Defense Of Sevastopol. In any case, glory to military nurses everywhere. In Russia they are called sisters.

[Eoin666]

Great date. Russians in Sevastopol, however, responded with Dasha Sevastopolskaya, whose sculpture graces the perimeter of Rubo's Panorama Of Defense Of Sevastopol. In any case, glory to military nurses everywhere. In Russia they are called sisters.

Actually Flo Nightinggale isn't always the most respected of characters, she was white, middle class and the media loved her, she was more of a modern hospital administrator, if you want a real nursing hero from the Crimea read up on Mary Seacole. Only recently is her memory gaining fame, also voted the greatest black Briton.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole

[nemowork]

Going to have to agree with that one, as a nurse Nightingale was a homicidal liability, any shift she worked on and the body count increased, she was a star at raising funds and publicity but smart nurses quickly realised she needed to be diverted to admin or morale tasks like helping write letters if they wanted patients to live. Its generally reckoned that if a wounded soldier was taken back to camp and tended by his fellow soldiers he had a 90% less chance of dying than if he was treated in Nightingales hospital in Scutari, probably not helped by the fact the hospital was built over a plague pit and had no sanitation.

it was her work as a statistician and campaigner for nursing care after the Crimean campaign that made her reputation. It was her use of her fame and reputation to counter germ theory and education that made her a real killer. She believed in the theory of bad vapours and did her best to counter the modernists who believed not only in germs but tried to promote the antiseptics and antibiotics to counter them. that and her insistence on micro-managing hospitals from Toronto to Meerut with the same theoretical maths that worked in Shrewsbury. She got back from the Crimea and had fit of hysterical vapours and never moved from her sick bed for the next 30 years, not an emotionally balanced woman and the way she ripped off the work of her subordinate statisticians and claimed their work as her own is very dubious. There is a bad streak in Victorian medicine that has good intentions and really bad results and Nightingale was its poster child.

The evidence for that is in the way the men who supposedly loved the lady with the lamp instead turned out with cash and benefits for seacole when she was in need.

Nothing personal against Florence but i always preferred Mary Seacole


So, at the age of 50, with her large stock of medicines, Mary went to the battle zone as a sutler - a person who follows the army and sells provisions to the troops. The moment she arrived in Balaclava there were sick and wounded to attend to. She opened her British Hotel in the summer of 1855, near the besieged city of Sevastopol. Soon the entire British army knew of 'Mother Seacole's'. The soldiers were her sons and she was their mother.
Though some of the army doctors, despite her saving them a lot of work, regarded her as a 'quack', others were less bigoted. The assistant surgeon of the 90th Light Infantry watched with admiration as she, numb with cold would administer to the soldiers, giving them tea and food and words of comfort. She was often on the front line and frequently under fire.
It was W.H. Russell, the first modern war correspondent, who made Mary Seacole famous. He described her as 'a warm and successful physician, who doctors and cures all manner of men with extraordinary success. She is always in attendance near the battle field to aid the wounded, and has earned many a poor fellow's blessings'.
She was, as she had promised herself, the first woman to enter Sevastopol when it fell.
In a letter of 1870 Nightingale acknowledged Seacole as "very kind to the men" and "did some good" in the Crimea, but said: "Anyone who employs Mrs Seacole will introduce much kindness - also much drunkenness and improper conduct..."
According to Ms Rappaport, "Florence Nightingale was trying to establish nursing as a profession for middle-class women, and she could not be associated with a freewheeler and maverick like Mary".

Roughly translated, Nightingale was a very starchy and hysterical person who would take credit for your work to further her own goals, Mary Seacole was an interesting character who would not only let you buy her a round but would probably drink you under the table :D

[BAF]

lol missed this thread, us nursing students had a big party and man i tell ya nurses know how to party :p

[largewar]

Alternative heroines (http://crime.suite101.com/article.cfm/angels-of-death-and-infanticides): ANGELS OF DEATH (http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/angels/female_nurses/index.html) & Nurse left a mysterious trail (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/07/05/2009-07-05_justice_story_nurse_in_turn_for_worse.html) …. I hope you feel comfortable …

[marktigger]

thank you!

I hope the new Nightingale museum will promote our image. And undermine what some of the right wing media here want to portray us as to push their agenda that the current economic problems are all the fault of the public sector.

[IconOfEvi]

I think we should celebrate IND by putting pics of sexy nurses around :)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Hot_nurse.jpg

Sadly, no nurses dress like this in the US anymore :(. Now its prints of whatever.

Also, Dasha ftw!