Florence Nightingale
This year we also mark the bicentenary of the birth of Florence Nightingale. A writer of some 200 books, pamphlets and articles, her legacy lives on in the fields of social reform, statistics and, of course, nursing.
Born into an upper class family in Florence and named after the city, she rejected familial and societal expectations of her to answer “the call”. Florence believed that nursing was in a divine calling. This heavily influenced her understanding of the service of nursing, which was very much in the vein of what we now call ‘mission’.
“To be a fellow worker with God is the highest aspiration of which we can conceive man capable.” – Florence Nightingale