Florence Nightingale Quotes

KISSING IT BETTER is giving a Masterclass on Friday 11th March as part of The Florence Nightingale Foundation Annual National Conference at the QE II Conference Centre in London. Conference runs for two days - 10th & 11th March.

The following are some of our favourite quotes...

QUOTES FROM FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE’S
‘NOTES ON NURSING’

‘Women should have the true nurse calling, the good of the sick first the second only the consideration of what is their ‘place’ to do – and that women who want for a housemaid to do this or the charwomen to do that, when the patient is suffering, have not the making of a nurse in them.’

‘If a nurse declines to do this because it was not her business, I should say that nursing was not her calling.

‘It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.’

‘They (patients) don't want you to be lachrymose and whining with them, they like you to be fresh and active and interested……..A sick person does so enjoy hearing good news’

‘The very alphabet of a nurse is to be able to interpret every change which comes over a patient’s countenance without causing him the exertion of saying what he feels’

There may be four different causes, any of which will provide the same result, viz., the patient slowly starving to death for want of nutrition
1. defect in cooking
2. defect in choice of diet
3. defect in choice of hours for taking diet
4. defect in appetite of patient
Yet all of them are generally comprehended in the one sweeping assertion that the patient has ‘no appetite’.

Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise,
do a patient more harm than any exertion’

‘Always sit within the patient’s view, so that when you speak to him he has not painfully to turn his head round in order to look at you’

‘It is but fair to say that this death was attributed to fright. It was a result of a long whispered conversation, within sight of the patient about an impending operation.

‘The effect in sickness of beautiful objects, of variety of objects, and especially of brilliancy of colour is hardly at all appreciated.’

‘I have seen…the most acute suffering produced from the patient not being able to see out of the window and the knots of the wood being the only view.’

‘The craving for ‘the return of the day’ which the sick so constantly evince, is generally nothing but the desire for light.’

‘Conciseness and decision in your movements, as well as your words, are necessary in the sick room,’

‘If you knew how unreasonably sick people suffer from reasonable causes of distress, you would take more pains about all these things.’

‘ Let whoever is in charge keep this simple question in her head ... how can I provide for the right thing to be always done?’

The amount of relief and comfort experienced by the sick after the skin has been carefully washed and dried, is one of the commonest observations made at a sick bed.'

‘I once told a “very good nurse” that the way in which her patient’s room was kept was quite enough to account for his sleeplessness; and she answered quite good humouredly that she was not at all surprised at it – as if the state of the room were, like the state of the weather, entirely out of her power. Now in what sense was this woman to be called a “nurse”?’