St.

Paul University Dumaguete

Dumaguete City
Graduate School
MAN/MSN Program
SY 2019-2020, 1st Semester

N201- Theoretical Foundations in Nursing

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Review of “The Florence Nightingale Movie”

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Submitted to:
Ayeza Cathrina B. Tinagan, RN, MAN
Professor

Submitted by:
Peter A. Orlino, RN
Student

November 1, 2019
 Florence Nightingale, a significant figure in the development of nursing, showed
the importance of nursing to the military during the Crimean War. In the Crimean War,
there was inadequate care and lack of medical resources for the soldiers in England.
Therefore, the secretary of war, Sir Sidney Herbert offered Florence Nightingale a position
of female nursing establishment of English General Hospital. As Nightingale took over the
appointment, she handpicked 38 females and began to implement changes to provide
the battling soldiers humane healthcare. As a result, the mortality rate went up from 42%
to 73%. (V. and B. Bullough, 1978) Her influence to the military demonstrated proper
nursing care significance in a war.
The Crimean War (1854–1856) was a terrible war by any reasonable criteria.
Florence Nightingale’s work in it is reported in detail in McDonald (2010). The death rates
were terrible. The vast majority of Crimean War deaths were due to preventable diseases.
The gains made by the war were negligible according to an article made by Brooks, R in
2011.
The Crimean War was formative for Nightingale, both for the lessons that she
learned from it and the status that she acquired from her work. She never glorified war
but came to understand that good could come out of evil; the creation of a new profession
of nursing in Britain and major reforms in healthcare and nutrition for ordinary soldiers in
the British Army, The methodology that she acquired post war in analyzing what went
wrong would ground her decades-long campaigns for social and healthcare reform. On
her statistical work found in McDonald (2003) and Stone (1997) books respectively.
First and foremost, I would like to thank our professor for sharing to us this movie
to predict the life of Florence Nightingale, the founder of Modern Nursing. This stirring
drama is based on the life of Florence Nightingale, an aristocratic woman who defied
Victorian society to reform hospital sanitation and to define the nursing profession as it is
known today.
After volunteering to travel to Scutari to care for the wounded soldiers of the
Crimean War, she was scorned by her community and faced great opposition for her new
way of thinking. However, through her selfless acts of caring, she quickly became known
as “The Lady with the Lamp,” the caring nurse whose shadow softened those wounded.
Indeed, I am proud to be a nurse. It may be tiring sometimes to care for the sick
and ill patients but never can it be too tiring because you are doing it to help others.
This is one of the many BBC-made documentaries on Florence Nightingale that is
currently being sold as teaching aids. A group of academics, however, have called for
them to be recalled. They claim these films demean Miss Nightingale by portraying her
as “a manipulative, neurotic and sexually repressed woman who inadvertently killed
troops during the Crimean War through medical error.”
They also criticise the BBC for being sexist in referring to her by her first name.
They say a documentary on Charles Darwin for example would never call him “Charlie”.
The group, led by Professor Lynn MacDonald from the University of Guelph in Canada,
called on the BBC to withdraw from shops copies of Florence Nightingale: Iron Maiden
and Reputations: Florence Nightingale.

Here’s a part of their letter to the BBC:

We ask the BBC to (preferably) withdraw the two hostile films, at the very
least to identify them as including unsubstantiated and fictional portrayals of
Nightingale. Of course scholars may differ in interpretation, but still the BBC’s
record is appalling. Not one of the academics used to attack Nightingale ever
published his/her accusations in a peer-reviewed book or journal.

REFERENCES:
Baudens, L. (1857) Souvenirs d’une mission médicale a l’armée d’Orient: I. le campement
des alliés (15 February 1857) 876-908; II. Les ambulances et le Service Chirurgical (1
April 1857) 587-616; III. Les hôpitaux, les épidémies et le typhus de Crimée, (1 June
1857) Revue des deux Mondes (15 June 1857) 590-635.
Baudens, L. (1862a) La guerre en Crimée. Les campements, les abris, les ambulances,
les hôpitaux, etc. Paris: Michel Lévy.
Baudens, L. (1862b) On Military and Camp Hospitals and the Health of the Troops in the
Field, trans. Franklin B. Hough. New York: Baillière.
Hall, J. (1857) Observations on the Report of the Sanitary Commissioners in the Crimea,
During the Years 1855 and 1856. London: W. Clowes & Sons.
Nightingale, F. (1858a) Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital
Administration of the British Army. London: Harrison.
Smith, A. (1858) Medical and Surgical History of the British Army which served in Turkey
and the Crimea. 2 vols. London: Harrison.
Smith, F. B. (1982) Florence Nightingale: Reputation and Power. London: Croom Helm.
Essays, UK. (November 2018). The History Of Nursing History Essay. Retrieved from
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/history/the-history-of-nursing-history-
essay.php?vref=1