In these modern times when considerable environmental changes are taking place on a global scale and a variety of social security systems are showing signs of deadlock, how to live a healthy life is once again a common issue for all mankind. In the midst of radical social changes in Britain in her time, F. Nightingale (1820 ‒ 1910), known as a founder of modern nursing, penned a huge volume of writings containing a number of noteworthy proposals which saw through mankind’s future and established the basis for a broad scope of institutional reforms. The challenge for modern day nurses in finding solutions to modern day complex problems could be minimized by learning from F. Nightingale. The purpose of this study was to identify analogies in order to solve modern day complex problems by analyzing from the works of F. Nightingale.
Methods:
In an attempt to establish the way of analogies, 12 of her most important accomplishments, related to social reform, such as ‘Reform of the Lady’s Hospital on Harley Street (1853-1855)’ ‘Establishment of a training school for nurses (1860) ’ and ‘Refining the social support system for the poor (1862-1867)’ were chosen and 12 modern day complex problems in the health fields in Japan which are analogous to problems solved by F. Nightingale were selected as the subjects of this study. Background research of each accomplishment and modern day complex problem was conducted and structural commonness of those 2 phenomena was identified. We finally integrated those structural commonness and found the way of analogy to solve the problems by learning from F. Nightingale’s work.
Results:
The ways of analogy to solve the problems by learning from F. Nightingale’s work ware as follows.
Based on Natural Law and believing in human potential.
To compare the background of each problem to grasp the historical process and structural cause of the problem and to deduce an action plan.
Use scientific epistemology as a standard when implementing the plan.
In case of unexpected accidents, put top priority on securing the safety of human beings, inquire into the cause and prevent recurrence.
Conclusion:
Although the community and health care services are facing systemic financial troubles, it has been suggested that by extracting a way of solving problems as hypothesis by using this analogy, we can realize a human centered healthier society based on the unique philosophy of nursing.