Book choice - Notes on Nightingale: the influence and legacy of a nursing icon

Edited by Sioban Nelson and Anne Marie Rafferty, Cornell University Press. £12.50. Reviewed by Dr Ruth Davies, Swansea University.

Edited by some of our most eminent nurse historians, this book sheds new light on the life, work and continuing influence of Florence Nightingale. It critically analyses her contribution to nursing and it is refreshing to read a historical text that for once actually connects her scholarship, research and statistics to modern day nursing.

This is a riveting read, especially the chapter by Lynn McDonald, which challenges and indeed slays some of the Nightingale myths which have abounded since the 1990s, putting into perspective the contribution made by the Nightingale School of Nursing.

A legacy of courage

I challenge any nurse not to be moved by Sioban Nelson’s chapter, which gives an account of nurses at the Hiroshima Army Red Cross Hospital who recited the Nightingale pledge after the Japanese surrender, to give themselves the courage to carry on nursing the many victims of the atomic bomb.

The relevance of Nightingale to nursing today is a thread throughout this book. In the final chapter, Anne Marie Rafferty and Rosemary Wall put this in context with reference to the many hospital scandals that have beset the UK and USA health systems. They also examine the professional and public concerns about poor standards of care and perceived lack of clinical leadership and accountability.

Perhaps, as this chapter suggests, the answer to these problems is not to reinvent nursing but to read, learn and be informed, as well as continue to be inspired by our most famous and enduring icon, Florence Nightingale.