Following in Florence Nightingale’s Footsteps – Literally!

On the Road with Sue Hassmiller as she traces the work of the legendary Florence Nightingale . . .

On her upcoming summer vacation, Susan Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Senior Advisor for Nursing, will be pursuing a dream to learn more about the life and work of the legendary Florence Nightingale. She’ll be traveling through Europe on a special tour developed in honor of the centennial of Nightingale’s death. In this and upcoming blog posts, Hassmiller reports on her trip, what she learns, and what it means to nurses’ work today. (Addendum: click here for the full series of posts.)

Eighteen years old and “hot to trot.” That’s what I thought I was. Having just been admitted into nursing school, I was set to change the world…one patient at a time. They tried to teach me about Florence Nightingale, but she was someone from the past…not likely to help me learn to start IVs, put in catheters, or run ventilators. If there were iPods back then, I would have used mine to avoid lessons about how Florence Nightingale changed the face of nursing forever. What an exaggeration, I thought! There was nothing to be learned from her…so I tuned out every last bit of it.  […]

2016-11-21T13:16:49-05:00July 9th, 2010|nursing history|23 Comments
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Is the Florence Nightingale Pledge in Need of a Makeover?

By Christine Moffa, who was AJN clinical editor at the time it was written in 2010.

Authors and publishers frequently send nursing– and health care–related books to AJN in hopes we will review them. I love it, so keep on sending them. My latest read is Mystery at Marian Manor: The Adventures of Nora Brady, Student Nurse, a book for young adults. I guess you could call it a Cherry Ames for the new millennium.

At the beginning of the book is the Florence Nightingale Pledge, something I haven’t read since my graduation in 1995. I have to say it made me cringe. It’s almost as bad as when I visit my parents and see the nursing school graduation photo of me in that silly nursing cap I wore under protest. (If the men didn’t have to wear it, why did I?) If you’ve forgotten the pledge, here goes:

I solemnly pledge myself before God and presence of this assembly;
To pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully.
I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous
and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug.
I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession
and will hold in […]

2016-11-21T13:19:41-05:00February 2nd, 2010|career, nursing history, nursing perspective, students|26 Comments
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Rating AJN’s Coverage of Nazi Atrocities: Is Silence Ever an Option for Nurses?

One of the feature articles in the August issue takes an unflinching look at a shameful yet little-known episode of nursing history: “The Third Reich, Nursing, and AJN” by Mary Deane Lagerwey, PhD, RN, examines AJN’s coverage of events in Germany during the Nazi era—before and during WWII—and in the postwar years, and compares the reporting in this journal with that of other professional and popular journals of the day, such as Life and JAMA.

2016-11-21T13:24:07-05:00August 6th, 2009|nursing history, nursing research|1 Comment
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“Maybe I Couldn’t Have Done That”: (Almost) Memories of Being a Nurse in Vietnam

Vietnam Women's Memorial, Washington, DC. Courtesy of Kay Schwebke.

I attended nursing school between 1967 and 1971, when the war in Vietnam was raging. I spent a good part of 1968 at the Manhattan Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital, where I did much of my medical–surgical clinical rotation. Two days a week, I provided care for injured soldiers who were my own age. In the evening, I watched newscasts filled with images of freshly wounded soldiers and napalmed villagers and dutifully listened to the nightly body count, feeling not much better when “we” had fewer than “them.” […]

2016-11-21T13:30:37-05:00May 5th, 2009|nursing history|1 Comment
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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