[00:00] Welcome to the first Florence Nightingale minisode! This minisode is an introduction to Florence, who she was, and what she was all about. There will be nine minisodes in total, and these are commentaries on one of Florence's many publications and I think one of her best Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is Not, which she wrote in 1859. Can you guys imagine what nursing was like in 1859? This book was recommended and loaned to me by my brother, Dr. Chris Patty, my guest for the fourth episode of this podcast. Be sure to check that one out if you missed it. He is amazing. During these minisodes, I will be giving away three of the commemorative editions of Florence's book Notes on Nursing. This is a really special Lippincott edition with those fancy gilded pages and introductions by nurse leaders, past and present. There will be more information on my Instagram, which is @theConversingNursePodcast, so be sure to go over there and look for the giveaway details. I would love for you to receive one of these special editions! Thank you for listening. And let's get started. 
[01:27] You're listening to the Conversing Nurse podcast. I'm Michelle, your host. And this is where together we explore the nursing profession one conversation at a time. 
[01:45] So Florence was born in Italy, Florence, Italy in particular, into a very wealthy family. Her father was a landowner and they owned two residences in England, and one of them was 130 acres, so that's a lot of land. And he was very invested in providing an education for her, and he wanted her to have a very liberal education, and that included teaching her five different languages and traveling. They traveled quite extensively. In terms of her mother, everything that I've looked at says that her mother was basically a socialite and she was really interested in climbing the social ladder to the point where she really came down on Florence and rejected her idea of being a nurse. So Florence, at 16, had a calling from God, and she said that God wanted her to minister to the sick in the way of becoming a nurse. Her mom and her older sister didn't take this well. Okay, first of all, we have to look into what nurses were like in the 19th century, it was very menial work. Some might say that it still is today, but they would be wrong. But in the 19th century, it was looked at as a very menial job. It was not looked upon as it is today, as a profession. Nurses were prostitutes, felons, and murderers. In general, they were just not good people. So imagine being the mother of this teenager when she says she wants to be a nurse. You can imagine the resistance that her mother put up to that. These resources don't say how her father felt. I'm going to say what I think he felt and it might be wrong, but I think he was much more tolerant of what Florence wanted to do just for the main reason that he really wanted to give her a broad education. So after she was called by God, by the way, she was a Unitarian, actually, many families in England in the 19th century, and it had a big following. And when I read this, I said, what is Unitarianism? I didn't know what it was. Basically, Unitarianism is a denomination that's Christian, however, they don't believe in the Trinity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. They believe that God is one singular person. And I don't even think that matters, the fact that she was guided by God, by her belief in God. One of the ways that I would describe Florence is that she was a feminist. And if my definition of a feminist is someone who advances the rights and the causes of women, then I think that Florence did that. And you'll see in some of the readings in the later minisodes why. I think that just based on some of the things that she believed in, she was also an activist. When she found something that was wrong, she wanted to change it. And she had a lot of clout. She met with heads of armies and political figures, and she had people in high places that could make the changes that she wanted to make in terms of what she discovered during her time in Crimea during the Crimean War and ministering to the soldiers at Qatari, she found the place in complete shambles. There were rats, there was disease, there were lice. There was no clean water, there was no clean food, and there was no light. And these are things that we know as nurses are going to help people get better and come to a state of health instead of a state of disease. So when she came upon these things, she wanted to change them. And she was very convincing to the powers that be. She was an advocate, absolutely. How could you not be an advocate when you're fighting for the rights of soldiers and women and sick people and poor people? She was definitely an advocate. And I think nurses are advocates today. We advocate for the sick in so many ways and in the same ways that Florence did. And like I said, we'll talk about those in the next minisodes. Florence was a perfectionist, and I see a lot of similarities in perfectionism in nursing. I am a self-proclaimed perfectionist. I like things to be done right, and I will continue doing things until those things get to be right. And I've worked with many nursing colleagues over the years who feel the same way and believe the same way and practice the same way. They really want to get it perfect. So I admire that in Florence. And one of the things that she did in her perfectionism, in her drive to get these things right is she neglected her health. And I think that certainly rings true in our profession today. We work long hours, we work overtime, and we put things on the back burner in terms of our own health. I know I certainly did in my breast cancer journey; we'll talk about that too. She was driven to the point of exhaustion. She contracted brucellosis while she was caring for the soldiers in Crimea, that's a bacterial infection from unpasteurized dairy, which at that time they were not pasteurizing dairy. Today we would treat that infection with antibiotics, long-term antibiotics. It takes about a month or two to get rid of that infection. But she suffered from fever, sweats, fatigue, joint pain, abdominal pain, muscle pain, weight loss, persistent cough, headaches, swollen nodes, all of those really awful things. And she didn't rest as she should have. She didn't eat as she should have. She was really driven by wanting to take care of her fellow man, and she suffered because of it. She was bedbound. She was an invalid for many years. Still, she did not let that stop her. She worked from her bed. She wrote many letters, and she influenced many people, and she changed many lives. So she's my heroine in many ways. And I just can't wait to talk more about Florence.