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The Lady With the Lamp National Nurses Week is always May 6-12, ending on Florence Nightingale's birthday. National Nurses Week is always May 6-12, ending on Florence Nightingale's birthday. By ADVANCE staff
Test your knowledge about the founder of modern day nursing with some of these lesser known facts:
Nightingale's father was a pioneer in epidemiology and tutored Florence in mathematics/statistics, an area she excelled in later in her career.
A gifted statistician in her own right, Nightingale was fond of using pie charts when presenting her statistics.
Among many studies, Nightingale did a statistical analysis of sanitation in India.
Nightingale was the first female to be elected to Royal Statistical Society.
Florence Nightingale defied her extremely wealthy family and upper class conventions in choosing to become a nurse in 1845.
Nightingale not only fought for better medical care, but also championed social issues such as reform of the British Poor Laws.
Nightingale's first published work was on a German Lutheran religious community in 1851.
Most famous for her care of soldiers during the Crimean War, Nightingale entered Turkey in 1854 with 38 nurses she personally trained.
In Nightingale's first winter at Scutari in the Crimea, the death toll rose with more than 4,077 soldiers dying.
Nightingale's first evidence-based practice research involved collecting evidence that poor living conditions were the cause of most soldier deaths during the Crimean War.
The Times of London is widely considered responsible for labeling Nightingale "the lady with the lamp."
The U.S. government consulted Nightingale on setting up military hospitals during the Civil War.
As a woman, Nightingale could not serve on the British Royal Commission on the Health of the Army even though she played a critical role in its formation.
What is now the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, part of King's College London, was established by her to train nurses in 1860.
Notes on Nursing also sold well as a popular book in the 1860s.
In 1867, poet Henry Longfellow's poem "Santa Filomena" further ensured Nightingale's image with the lines, "Lo! In that hour of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom."
In the 1870s, Nightingale trained Linda Richards, the first formally trained American nurse.
Nightingale died in 1910, but her family declined to have her buried in Westminster Abbey with kings, queens and other English nobility. She is buried in the churchyard at St. Margaret's Church, East Wellow, Hampshire, England.
Nightingale's maternal grandfather was the British abolitionist Will Smith.
Nightingale is named after her birthplace, Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany (Italy).
To read more about Florence Nightingale and her continuing influence on nurses, see this selection of editor's picks from the ADVANCE for Nurses archives:
Led by the LampThe Nightingale Initiative for Global Health has created the Nightingale Declaration, designed to bring health to the forefront of world consciousness.For Florence Dee Jones composes and performs a song about nursing's heroine.
Copyright ©2008 Merion Publications