Florence Nightingale Today: Our Global Leadership Legacy

In modern China, India and Japan, in Africa and the Arab world, in Turkey and the Caribbean, the South Pacific and all the Americas, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is renowned as a pioneering, heroic figure. She is primarily remembered as the “Lady with the Lamp” who began her nursing career during the Crimean War, continuing, thereafter, to build the foundations of modern nursing and nursing education. But these details are only part of her panoramic life in service to human health. She was also a consummate health policy advocate who influenced the world leaders of her time. She was an ardent environmentalist who changed conditions that caused disease. She was a global networker who corresponded with 1000s of people around the world about furthering and promoting health issues. She was an effective media and communications expert who knew how to impact upon public awareness to change how people valued health in her time. And, she knew from her own deep and prolonged experience with personal health and well-being, that she and everyone need to be renewed to “answer your calling” to be an effective, caring and compassionate nurse, each day, across an entire lifetime. She called all of these roles “Health Nursing.” In our 21st century “global village,” these additional Nightingale insights and skills can become innovative capacities developed by nurses and other concerned citizens who are concerned about influencing and impacting upon the factors which determine and sustain the health of humanity in our time.