Nursing celebrities. You don’t hear much about them. Maybe you should. It’s the fate of these heroes, working at the bedsides of the most vulnerable members of our population, to find their efforts uncelebrated.
Every once in a while, someone makes a contribution to healthcare that changes the way it is done.
Those are the types of accomplishments we are dealing with in this article. Read on for a list of the most influential nurses in healthcare history and what they did to transform the profession.
Why Nursing Matters Now More Than Ever
The people you are about to meet did their work in desperate circumstances. They served as healthcare workers in wartime situations, always working in desperate conditions that might seem insane to a modern reader. How insane!
One of the women you are about to be introduced to was the first to suggest handwashing as a sound medical practice.
It would be impossible to overstate the value of caring healthcare workers in a time of primitive medical practices.
Today, the technology is better, but the circumstances are often still extreme. There are tens of thousands of open nursing positions that will not be filled this year.
Healthcare workers—particularly healthcare workers who come from a wide range of different backgrounds—are needed more now than ever. If you are considering nursing as a career, take inspiration from these heroes who came before you.
Florence Nightingale
Many people call her the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale was born to a wealthy English family and came up as a nurse during the Crimean War. Her pursuit of healthcare was met with almost immediate disdain by most of her family.
At the time, women were expected to serve primarily as wives and mothers. This was particularly true of women in Nightingale’s well-to-do circumstances.
Florence didn’t care.
After being trained in a religious Lutheran community, she rose to prominence as a volunteer nurse during the Crimean War.
She quickly found that the conditions of care were hideous. English soldiers were dying of infections more often than they died from their actual wounds.
Nighingale’s solution? To introduce a hygienic routine that would look very at home in a modern hospital. One of the most impactful and enduring of her introductions seems particularly familiar—yet it was not done at the time: Hand washing with soap.
Florence did not stop there. For more than four decades, she served as a champion for healthcare practices all across England. Her contributions to the profession continue to be studied to this day.
Clara Barton
Clara Barton was known to those living in her 1821 Massachusetts community as a shy but talented young girl. She was introduced to healthcare at an early age following a household accident. Her brother, David, had fallen from the roof of their family barn.
This single event shaped the next two years of Clara’s life. As she helped her brother recover over the next twenty-four months, she developed a passion for helping others.
Her next foray into nursing was brought on by the Civil War. Starting her career as a nurse hired to help soldiers injured during training, she eventually took her talents to the battlefield, working as a field medic.
This meant working with other nurses behind the front lines to dress wounds.
Barton became famous during the war. Many people called her “The Florence Nightingale of America.”
When the Civil War was over, Barton traveled abroad. In Switzerland, she came across an organization not yet known in the United States. The Red Cross. Barton was instrumental in bringing the organization to the United States, a contribution to American healthcare that continues to be felt to this day.
Walt Whitman
Yes, that Walt Whitman. Better known for his contributions to American Letters—a fancy way of saying Western literature—Whitman came up as a nurse during the Civil War. His introduction to the profession would seem a little strange by modern standards.
Whitman first traveled to Washington, D.C. after reading about a soldier named Whitman injured during the war. At the time, it was quite common for families to care for their injured relatives.
It turns out that the article did refer to his brother, but the reports were exaggerated. Lieutenant Whitman has experienced only a minor wound that did not require Walt’s assistance.
The poet quickly found that many men were not so lucky. There were thousands of gravely injured men struggling both against their injuries and the difficult circumstances of their care.
Whitman decided to stay. He contributed to the war efforts as an army clerk but volunteered in the hospitals as often as he could. When he wasn’t helping to care for the wounded, he was writing letters to the family members of wounded soldiers, updating them on the men’s status.
Whitman would go on to write about his experiences in his famous poem, “The Wound Dresser.”
Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,
Straight and swift to my wounded I go,
Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground,
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, under the roof the hospital,
To the long rows of cots up and down each side, I return,
To each and all, one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,
An attendant follows, holding a tray; he carries a refuse pail,
Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill’d again.
Some Things Never Change
It’s persistence and compassion that unite all of the people featured on our list today. The three nurses spotlighted in this article saw a problem and decided to contribute to the solution. True, if you want to develop a lasting contribution to the world of nursing today, you will need to think up something a little less obvious than handwashing.
That doesn’t mean that all of the most important developments in the profession have already happened. The world needs more nurses. If the heroes spotlighted in this article today teach anything it’s this: Be the change you want to see in your community.
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