Florence Nightingale

Economist magazine health care writer Slavea Chankova in 2020 wrote an article about Florence Nightingale (May 12, 1820 – Aug 13, 1910) and her role in the nursing profession. The story focused on the world Health Organization’s plan to make 2020 as the year of the nurse with Florence Nightingale as the model. The 2020 to 2022 COVID world lockdown forced the United Nations, WHO and many nations to cancel all activities regarding nursing.

Nightingale was the one of few women volunteers who took care of sick/wounded British soldiers during the 1853–56 Crimean war where more soldiers died because of crude health care facilities than in combat. Because of her bad experience in the Crimean war, she founded the world’s first nursing school in London in 1860. She led the world’s concern for hospital cleanliness after her experience in Crimea. Some think nursing as a narrow set of skills learned after years of working in hospitals. Today, nurses have doctorate level studies in nursing and specialize in clinical disciplines like neonatology, cardiology and accidents/ emergency.

Beyond 2020, nurses will be doing many tasks usually reserved for doctors. Today 2/3 of anesthetics given to patients in America are made by certified nurse anesthetics. In UK, specialized nurses now perform routine stomach, orthopedic and cardiac surgery. In some areas in Sahara, Africa nurses are trained to do emergency caesarean functions. The status of nurses vary. In Germany, India, Portugal they are treated as minions of doctors and cannot diagnose even ordinary illness or give medications. 50% of the world’s healthcare workers are nurses, 90% of sick people contacts are with nurses. Yet they are not invited to make health policy decisions in hospitals. In the west, nurses are now replacing general practitioners in healing diabetic patients and other chronic conditions requiring lifestyle change.

Brian Dolan said “People look up to a doctor but they look at a nurse in the eye.” In surveys about trust in people who are professionals, nurses are usually rated no. 1. Studies show the world’s health will be affected by 2 problems regarding nurses: 1. By 2030, the world be short of 7.6 million nurses. USA, UK, Canada had bad nurse shortage since 2018. Their solution, get more foreign nurses by giving them higher salaries, cash bonuses, when nurses accept their offers, free plane tickets, easy immigration processing and fast approval of citizenship applications.

Today USA, UK, Canada’s patients are alive because of the foreign nurses. This is bad for poor nations because their doctors, medical technologists, nurses, health care workers all go abroad (India, Philippines and some south American Nations) 2. The second problem is how to stop the flow of foreign health workers especially nurses to the west. The poor nations can only appeal to patriotism. It is hard to balance love of nation and leaving for work abroad.

Nurses know if they work in US, UK, hospitals, they will have better futures and they can send dollars to feed their parents, families relatives, stuck in the old world. We should have honored the nursing profession and Florence Nightingale in 2020 but COVID 19 prevented us. Today, we honor Florence Nightingale’s efforts to improve hospital care and make better nurses. To all nurses, salamat po. May your tribe increase. The harvest is great but the workers are few. Pray that we will have more nurses.