Florence Nightingale (yes, yes, she's a woman)

**Marx** · 15th-October-2007

An excellent article by Melanie Phillips in today's Daily Mail.

Dirty wards, feminism and the tragic end of Florence Nightingale's ethos of patient care

How in God's name have we come to this?
In three hospitals in Kent, at least 90 patients have died from a superbug infection caused by filthy conditions with unwashed bedpans, staff 'too busy' to clean their hands and — most appalling of all — nurses telling patients with diarrhoea to 'go in their beds'.

This unspeakable situation reveals not just callousness towards suffering and indifference to human dignity but a breakdown of some of our most basic civilised values.

Nor is this an isolated scandal. Last October, an internal memo warned the Government that virtually every NHS trust was reporting superbug infection. The health service, in other words, is institutionally polluted.
The Government's response?

To ignore this crisis, and then belatedly to bring forth Gordon Brown's pathetic commitment to a sporadic hospital 'deep clean'.

What has happened to the duty of care in our flagship public service? What has happened, indeed, to our sense of common humanity?
Two things have combined to cause this awful situation. The first is the Government's Stalinist control of the NHS which directly conflicts with patient care.

The Kent hospitals focused on meeting waiting time targets to the exclusion of just about everything else; and the NHS management's byzantine structure ensures an almost total absence of accountability.

But that is far from the full explanation. Much more important is what has happened to the nursing profession, where there has simply been a collapse of that ethic of caring first promulgated by the inventor of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale.

Of course, it must be said that there are still many dedicated and caring nurses of whom Nightingale would be proud. But in general, her ethic has been all but destroyed.

Nursing is not a job but a vocation. That means it is governed by a sense of moral duty to the patient rather than by the self-interest of the nurse.
That sense of vocation lay at the heart of Nightingale's vision. It was no accident that in her seminal Notes On Nursing, published in 1860, she wrote that 'the greater part of nursing consists in preserving cleanliness'.

It was not just that cleanliness was essential for recovery and health.
Keeping both hospital and patients clean meant the nurse needed to have the most elevated of motives to put the care and dignity of her patients first.

Accordingly, lowly functions such as washing, dressing and administering bedpans — where dignity was most fragile — were the functions that in nursing were invested with the highest possible significance. Simply, these were moral acts.

Accordingly, wrote Nightingale, if a nurse declined to do these kinds of things for her patient because she was so concerned about her own status, nursing was not her calling. 'Women who wait for the housemaid to do this, or for the charwoman to do that, when their patients are suffering, have not the making of a nurse in them.'

Florence Nightingale belongs in the first rank of pioneering Victorian feminists. But the tragedy is that modern feminism has all but destroyed what she stood for.

In the 1980s, nursing underwent a revolution. Under the influence of feminist thinking, its leaders decided that nurses were treated like skivvies by doctors, who were mostly men. To achieve equality for women, therefore, nursing had to gain equal status with medicine. So nurse training was taken away from the hospitals and turned into an academic subject taught in universities.

This directly contradicted an explicit warning given by Florence Nightingale herself, that her 'sisters' should steer clear of the 'jargon' about the 'rights' of women, 'which urges women to do all that men do, including the medical and other professions, merely because men do it, and without regard to whether this is the best that women can do.'

That, however, was exactly what the nursing establishment proceeded to do. Since caring for patients was demeaning to women, it could no longer be the cardinal principle of nursing. Instead, the primary goal became to realise the potential of the nurse, to deliver equality with the male-dominated medical profession.

In her book The Project 2000 Nurse, Ann Bradshaw, a specialist in palliative care, described how this agenda removed caring, kindness, compassion and dedication from nurse training. Student nurses now studied courses such as sociology, gender studies, politics, psychology, microbiology and management. They were assessed for their communication, management, problem- solving and analytical skills.
'Specific clinical nursing skills were not mentioned,' she wrote.
In short, nurses became too grand to care.

I wouldn't have believed this possible had I not been forced to witness how my own mother was treated in a London teaching hospital a few years ago.

She suffered under a wretched double burden of multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease. In that pitiable condition, which meant she could barely walk, she broke her hip and was admitted for surgery to a fracture ward.

If I hadn't been on hand every day, she would have starved.
After surgery, she was unable to move at all in her bed. Yet the nurses made no attempt to help her to eat; nor did they even deign to move her pillow to make her more comfortable.

Yet when I protested, I was told by the senior nurse on duty the bare-faced lie that an hour previously my mother had been 'skipping round the ward'.

It was then that I realised that all the excuses about NHS failure being caused by lack of money were a lie. It was then that I understood that there was, instead, a lack of something infinitely more profound — conscience, kindness, a sense of duty to others — and that the image of the NHS as the embodiment of altruism was a grotesque illusion. If you were old and incapable, it was an encounter to be feared.

The memory of my mother's terrible experience still makes me cry; and I weep also for all those poor souls who have died at the hands of the NHS in Kent, and all those other frail and powerless patients who are being treated so abominably in hospitals up and down the country.
What's happened in our hospitals surely reflects a still wider social breakdown.

Our society seems to have turned into a Darwinian nightmare in which the fittest prosper mightily while the old and weak are tossed aside as of no value.

That's why we starve and dehydrate some elderly people to death. That's why we turn a blind eye to the dreadful conditions in so many old people's homes. And that's why nurses become managers, and preen themselves as expert professionals in meetings and seminars and conferences and away-days while patients in their hospitals are left to die in their own filth.

And what about the Labour Party, for which the NHS is the ultimate symbol of its own superior social conscience? Are Labour MPs agitating about the filth in our hospitals and the deaths it is causing?
Dream on.

Labour MPs are currently wholly occupied with inspecting their own navel and analysing who is up or down in the Gordon Brown/David Cameron circus.

And as for the Health Secretary, while patients are dying as the direct result of the system over which he presides, he appears to think that the biggest threat to the future of the very planet is that people are too fat.
Our NHS is now the symbol of a society that has lost its moral compass along with its heart and soul.

**bachelor tom** · 15th-October-2007

quote:
But that is far from the full explanation. Much more important is what has happened to the nursing profession, where there has simply been a collapse of that ethic of caring first promulgated by the inventor of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale.

My aunt has been a nurse for almost fifty years, and she talks about this with great sadness.

Women have no sympathy . . . And my experience of women is almost as large as Europe. And it is so intimate too. Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so.
- Florence Nightingdale

I love that quote

**FFFF** · 16th-October-2007

My experience of nurses are that they are a load of lazy fat fucks who cant be arsed with anything other than getting pissed at the weekend , or when they get home, then recovering from their hang-overs while watching tv all day on the wards and getting paid for a job they dont do very well..

With a few exceptions..

But sadly, the norm is that nurses are no more "angels" than "anals"..

Up their fucking own..

**Adrian** · 16th-October-2007

Well, I, for one, totally hope we can get rid of our horrible capitalist healthcare system here in America that just serves to fill the pockets of those greedy insurance companies so that we can receive all the glorious benefits of a well run national system like those enlightened Europeans have!

**Kim** · 16th-October-2007

Well, I, for one, totally hope we can get rid of our horrible capitalist healthcare system here in America that just serves to fill the pockets of those greedy insurance companies so that we can receive all the glorious benefits of a well run national system like those enlightened Europeans have!

While I agree that our healthcare system is in desperate need of an overhaul, I'm always leery of handing control of things over to the government, including healthcare.

**FFFF** · 16th-October-2007

Quote from Kim

While I agree that our healthcare system is in desperate need of an overhaul, I'm always leery of handing control of things over to the government, including healthcare.

The NHS used to be the envy of the world.. Those days are way behind us now!!

Still, in the UK, thanks to the "two tier" health service, there is perhaps hope, if you have money..

**Adrian** · 16th-October-2007

Quote from Kim

While I agree that our healthcare system is in desperate need of an overhaul, I'm always leery of handing control of things over to the government, including healthcare.

I think one thing few people realize about the horrible capitalist healthcare system in America is that it isn't anything of the sort. According to wikipedia, for instance, US Government programs account for more than 44% of healthcare expenditures in the US, making it the largest insurer in the US and one of the top ten spenders among United Nations member countries. The US Government spends a greater fraction of its budget on healthcare than Canada does, for instance. Honestly, the only reason we're the capitalists is because we don't stop people from privately payig a doctor (like they do in Canada, for instance). Otherwise, it seems like we have plenty of publicly provided healthcare.

**Percy** · 17th-October-2007

Melanie paints a dreadful picture and quite rightly sheets some blame home to Feminism, particularly within the nursing 'profession'. It goes a lot deeper though. The comments here regarding public and private is interesting and the divide between the American experience and the British noted.

I grew up with the NHS and remember well old Doc MacDonald, our GP, who knew our family's health issues intimately. Our local hospital in Coventry was, by modern standards, in the dark ages but it's staff cared and worked hard. We had faith in the system. It seems such a long time ago that such faith was deserved - and met.

Few people under 50 in the UK quite understand the hope that the NHS held out for people. It was a jewel in the crown of post-war rebuilding.

My friend Amfortas was asked recently, in his Presidential interview, about the state of American health care.

13th Question; How do you feel about universal health care?

The population of Sirius Major is against it and I listen to what they say. I get messages. ( I am very well connected, Galactically, and they won’t speak to that Hillary woman). They don’t think we can cope, what with their digestive system and all. I think we have to just stick to ourselves for the moment and get it right. There is a lot to do.

To my mind it’s the corruption issue again rather than a political one. I have seen ‘National’ health care systems and ‘Private’ systems. Much of a muchness, frankly. Things get better technologically and skills-wise as time moves forward and minds work on medical issues, and money gets siphoned off by pencil-neck, rent-seeking bureaucrats, rapacious professionals and middle-ages Guilds of Mafioso in white coats. America has the best and worse of health care. Its basically super-crap. More people go to Thailand for hospital treatment than come to the USA. We have to get rid of the corruption and provide care; provide good, effective (which may mean less financially efficient) service to ‘We the People’; organise to best effect.

Argue with me if you will but a nation has certain responsibilities to its People. Defence isn’t contracted out to Tony Soprano and Co (hah! Part of the Iraq problem again.) and there is a case for not contracting out health to Dr. Soprano et al either. Or Dr, Phan Fat Thurmaturanguwallah. When the mafia scum, rent-seeking, parasites are cleared out of public life the particular organising principles will work, whatever you choose. It’s the Character of the People that counts.

Clearly this fits with the Feminism issue and nursing staff. The Character of the profession is infected with Hubris, a modern female scourge. Character can be perverted so easily when a sense of 'Entitlement' is rife; where faux-Envy is rife. But as I say, it is only a part of the more pervasive corruption of and within our society and the perversion of Character.

**SmtmsAlwys** · 17th-October-2007

My mother, who has been a nurse for many a year, has often lamented of the sheer laziness of much of the medical staff at the places she works. It's very sad to me that people go into such a field with no inclination to actually help others.

**FFFF** · 17th-October-2007

Yes, my experience in the inside has coloured my views, with a few exceptions, they are just in it for the money, which can be surprisingly high.. As in many feminised jobs these days!

**SmtmsAlwys** · 17th-October-2007

Quote from Drex

Yes, my experience in the inside has coloured my views, with a few exceptions, they are just in it for the money, which can be surprisingly high.. As in many feminised jobs these days!

My mother certainly doesn't do it for the money. She doesn't make enough here to qualify for that. Heh.

**wobs** · 19th-November-2009

Nursing doesn't learn from past mistakes:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8355388.stm
"All new nurses in England from 2013 will have to be educated to degree level from 2013, the Department of Health has announced."

**gaynorbarry** · 19th-November-2009

I thought Florence was a crap nurse, whose skill was to show compassion as you died, though she was considered an outstanding mathematician. In those days your survival rate was greater if you were left on the battlefield then be taken to Florence to die a painful death with Florence to comfort you in your dying moments.

Her methodology to cure and conviction that she was right led to the deaths of thousands as she demanded more and more troops to be sent to her hospital to get the Florence make over. The Royal engineers ordered by the army’s health commissioner cleaned the broken sewerage under the hospital which was the cause of the turn around in the number of deaths under the care of Florence. Working with the Commissioner they pinpointed the cause of deaths and then went on to change the way hospitals were run that actually worked.

Sorry for pissing all over Florence, but there is more to her story then meets the eye, the nation needed heroes and that’s how her story got slightly exaggerated. Even she admitted as much when she overcame her depression over the whole hospital incident. She made up for it though in the following years as many people seen her as a hero to the nation to be followed and heard.

**gaynorbarry** · 19th-November-2009

In regards to education education education, overrated if you ask me, especially the way it’s delivered. I believe in Russia at one time they had the most educated labourforce in the world doing the most menial of tasks imaginable. There is much to be learnt in this world which does not mean sitting behind a desk. Dont we have enough degree educated sound technicians, and Drama students, artist and photography students, ology students to supply all of Europe with? Experience and friendships are important but University is not the only place to experience these.

As for University degree nurses, how educated to you have to be to wipe some ones arse or will these menial type tasks be given to a new sub division of Nurse ie cleaner (wait till they start getting degrees). I know nurses do tasks that are on bar with doctors but you get my point. Come to think of it why did they just go for doctor training in the first place or become a dentist (doctor minus 2).