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My assignment, in Unit five, was on Florence Nightingale’s Environmental Theory and the more I read about her the more of hero she becomes to me.  She speaks to my advanced nursing practice because she has brought so much to the field of nursing in a time where women did not have a lot of influence or power.  When I read about the 13 Cannons of the Environmental Model of Nursing, I can see every one of them still presently practiced in nursing (Butts & Rich, 2013, p. 427).  Nursing is so much more than treating the sickness, it is about treating the person holistically (Arnstein, 1956, p. 542). When I assess my patients as a nurse I am looking not just at their disease I am looking at their diet, their, history, their labs and tests and if they are alert and oriented.  I see that Florence Nightingale did just that in a time nursing diagnosis did not exist. When she went to Turkey to help care for the troops during the Crimean War, I can’t help but wonder, if she had any idea of what her change in that hospital would do for the future of nursing.  From the notes she took, during that time, she publish a book that was filled with statistics, graphs, and data on the improvements from her work that enabled changes in military hospitals, Barracks, and initiated the start of a military medical school (Whyte, 2010, p. 20).  If I could model my advanced nursing practice after the example Florence Nightingale, than I think I will do well in the next phase of my nursing career.

Arnstein, M. G. (1956, July). Florence Nightingale's Influence on Nursing. Retrieved June 18, 2017, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1805929/ p. 541-542

(Butts, J. B., & Rich, K. L. (2013). Philosophies and Theories for Advanced Nursing Practice (2nd ed). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers

Whyte, A. (2010). Relighting the lamp: as the centenary of her death approaches, Florence Nightingale's contribution to modern nursing is celebrated by Alison Whyte. Nursing Standard, (18), 18-20.