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CHAPTER 5 Florence Nightingale’s Legacy of Caring and Its Applications 53

and the interrelationship of the specifics of the in-
terventions, such as “bed and bedding” and “clean-
liness of rooms and walls,” that go into making up
the “health of houses” (Fondriest & Osborne,
1994).

Nightingale’s Legacy

Philip and Beatrice Kalisch (1987, p. 26) describe
the popular and glorified images that arose out
of the portrayals of Florence Nightingale during
and after the Crimean War—that of nurse as self-
sacrificing, refined, virginal, and an “angel of
mercy,” a far less threatening image than one of ed-
ucated and skilled professional nurses. They attrib-
ute nurses’ low pay to the perception of nursing
as a “calling,” a way of life for devoted women
with private means, such as Florence Nightingale

(Kalisch & Kalisch, 1987, p. 20). Well over 100 years

later, the amount of scholarship on Nightingale

provides a more realistic portrait of a complex and

brilliant woman. To quote Auerbach (1982) and

Strachey (1918), “a demon, a rebel.. .”

Florence Nightingale’s legacy of caring and the

activism it implies is carried on in nursing today.

There is a resurgence and inclusion of concepts of

spirituality in current nursing practice and a delin-

eation of nursing’s caring base that in essence

began with the nursing life of Florence Nightingale.

Nightingale’s caring, as demonstrated in this chap-

ter, extended beyond the individual patient, beyond

the individual person. She herself said that the spe-

cific business of nursing was the least important of

the functions into which she had been forced in the

Crimea. Her caring encompassed a broadened

sphere—that of the British Army and, indeed, the

entire British Commonwealth.

FIGURE 5–6 Nightingale’s model of nursing and the environment.Illustration developed by V. Fondriest, RN, BSN, and J. Osborne, RN, C BSN.