By Sue Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN (5th in a series of posts by Hassmiller, who’s spending her summer vacation retracing crucial steps in Florence Nightingale’s innovative career)
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever be at the home of Florence Nightingale. But here I am, not only visiting her family’s estate, Embley Park, but sleeping here for the next four days. […]
Editor’s note: The two entries below, written on Saturday and Sunday in London, are the latest in a series of posts by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Senior Adviser for Nursing, Susan Hassmiller, who’s spending her summer vacation retracing the footsteps of Florence Nightingale and reflecting on the implications of Nightingale’s work for nurses today.
Saturday: Westminster Abbey (London)
I arrived in London for my vacation today. They tell me it is uncharacteristically hot (nearly 90 degrees), so that gave me full license to have ice cream . . . not once, but twice! And although the “official” Florence Nightingale tour hasn’t started, I didn’t waste time getting a head start on my quest to better understand the contributions of Ms. Nightingale. […]
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. […]