According to Peters, "We can bracket the impact of this style of 'being with' as 'placebo response', but the term tends to confuse because it obscures a valuable and potentially transformative reorientation of the practitioner -- client axis; the action of the placebo response is triggered by the loving, trusting presence of another in the therapeutic relationship" (p. 173).
Today, women represent about half of all health administrators and almost half of all medical students, and the medical establishment is no longer overwhelmingly male. According to Satel (2000), "Nurses can now train for jobs with considerable clinical responsibility, like advanced practice nursing, with a salary range of $55,000 to 75,000 per year, depending on experience and location. An advanced practice nurse can prescribe many types of medications and order and interpret laboratory tests" (p. 88). Further, nurse midwives deliver babies and nurses in neonatal, coronary and surgical intensive-care units are responsible for monitoring vital signs, cleaning and monitoring invasive catheters, evaluating heart monitor readouts and managing delicate metabolic states in their patients. Clearly, "Nursing has come a very long way since the days of Florence Nightingale" (Satel, 2000, p. 88). While the nursing profession itself has evolved in many ways that Nightingale may not have envisioned, the fact remains that her influence endures to this day in nursing science knowledge and contemporary nursing theories. "This shift in nursing science and knowledge matrix," Satel says, "is reflected in such shared...
88). The nursing theories introduced by Nightingale, then, are inextricably bound up in the nursing profession today.
Conclusion
The research showed that Florence Nightingale's efforts on the field of battle during the Crimean War earned her the respect and funds she needed to pursue her goal of providing the nursing profession with formal professional training in their duties by qualified practitioners. Her emphasis on providing compassionate medical services in as clean an environment as possible contributed to saving countless lives both during her lifetime and thereafter, and although the "Lady" herself might be gone, her "Lamp" of nursing theories endures to this day.
References
Grant, S. (September 2002). New light on the Lady with the Lamp. History Today, 52(9), 11.
Peters, D. (2001). Understanding the placebo effect in complementary medicine: Theory, practice, and research. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.
Satel, S. (2000). PC, M.D.: How political correctness is corrupting medicine. Boulder, CO: Basic Books.
Underwood, E.A. (2005). Florence Nightingale. In Encyclopedia Britannica [premium service].
Warbinek, E. & Zilm,. G. (1994). History of nursing education at the University of British Columbia, 1919-1994. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Appendix A Sketch of a hospital ward at Scutari,…
