The Birth of Modern Nursing and How It Has Evolved.

If you’ve worked in the healthcare industry for a while, you’ve probably already heard of Florence Nightingale, also widely known as “the Lady with the Lamp.” Florence Nightingale’s prominence started back at the height of the Crimean War, when she led a team of sanctioned nurses and served at a British military barracks. Her team found out that the wounded soldiers were poorly taken care of by overworked medical staff in the midst of official indifference. Medicines were in short supply, and proper hygiene was neglected, leading to mass infection as the primary cause of fatalities among wounded soldiers. Nightingale advocated for better standards of care, imposing basic hygiene standards and practices such as bathing, wearing clean clothing and dressings, washing hands, and providing adequate food. She herself wandered the hospital wards at night to personally provide support to the patients, earning her the nickname “the Lady with the Lamp.” The changes that she made during her stay at the barracks hospital reportedly reduced the mortality rate to about 2 percent. However, her contributions to the world don’t stop there. Her greatest achievements lie in her attempts to create social reforms in nursing and healthcare in general. As a token of gratitude and respect for Florence, the Nightingale Fund was established. She used a substantial amount of the private donations to inaugurate the Nightingale School of Nursing in London. The school formalized secular nursing education, making nursing a viable and respectable profession for women to pursue. Thus founding, and pioneering, the modern nursing profession. 

The story of Florence Nightingale is and will always be relevant in the world and most especially in the field of healthcare. She set an example of compassion, commitment to patient care, and diligence. Florence Nightingale was more than a nurse. She was a leader. Having learned a great deal about women’s education, history, mathematics, Italian, classical literature, and philosophy from her father at an early age, this eventually led to her many “calls from God,” which inspired her to take the path of nursing, despite being thwarted by her family as an inappropriate activity for a woman of her stature, thus urging her to marry and raise a family instead. Of course, she refused, and history was made as she went on and helped set the standard that healthcare providers continue to follow even up to this day, in the dawn of virtual healthcare services.

In celebration of Women’s Month, MedSpecialized resonates with the qualities of one of history’s most prominent women and recognizes that without these qualities, without Florence Nightingale’s sheer commitment and dedication to her profession, modern healthcare wouldn’t be the same, and the company would probably not exist at all. The country’s BPO industry is a highly competitive market, and as one of the Philippines’ fastest-growing BPO companies, MedSpecialized embodies compassion, commitment to patient care, and diligent and thoughtful healthcare administration. As Florence Nightingale was more than a woman and a nurse, MedSpecialized aspires to be more than just a BPO company, continuing to have passion for excellence and always being able to provide top-quality support to world-renowned healthcare companies and professionals around the globe.